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FALLS OF THE UECORACHIC, SIERRA MADRE MOUNTAINS, 
1239 FEET HIGH. 



IN THE LAND OF GAVE 

AND CLIFF DWELLERS 



Lieut. FREDERICK SCHWATKA 

AUTHOR OF "the CHILDREN OF THE COLD," " NIMROD IN 
THE NORTH ; OR, HUNTING AND FISHING ADVEN- 
TURES IN THE ARCTIC REGIONS," ETC. 



ILLUSTRATED 




NEW YORK 

THE CASSELL PUBLISHING CO. 
104 AND 106 Fourth Avenue 



Copyright, 1893, by 
CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY. 



All rights reserved. 







THE MKRSHON COMPANY PRESS, 
RAHWAY, f • J. 



PREFACE. 



This book records in a popular way 
the adventures, researches, and other 
doings of two expeditions sent into 
Northern Mexico in the years 1889 and 
1890, the patron of the first being 
America and of the other The Herald^ 
both Chicago publications. The story is 
told, however, as if it were a continuous 
undertaking, to make it more succinct and 
interesting; the public probably being 
uninterested in the business details, which 
did not vary from the usual details of 
that nature. 

In this light the Mexican expedition 



iV PREFACE. 

easily divides itself into three quite 
distinct trips, the first from Deming, 
N. M., southward into the northwestern 
part of the State of Chihuahua ; the 
second through the central part of the 
State of Sonora ; and the third and most 
important from the city of Chihuahua, 
in the State of the same name, westward 
into the Sierra Madre range, that forms 
the boundary between the States of 
Sonora and Chihuahua on the northern 
part of the travels, and Durango and 
Sinaloa on the southern. 

None of the travels can be strictly 
called exploration, although often alluded 
to as such in the American press, yet 
there were a few interesting and impor- 
ant facts disclosed by the researches that 
almost amounted t discoveries in the 
light of the very little that was generally 



PREFACE. V 

known regarding them. This was espe- 
cially true of the living cliff and cave 
dwellers found abiding in the Northern 
Mexican Sierra Madres, the knowledge 
of whose existence was seemingly con- 
fined to the x\2X\v^ peons and laborers but 
little above them in the scale of intelli- 
gence, on the one side, and an exceed- 
ingly few intelligent Mexicans and for- 
eigners, mostly engaged in mining, on 
the other, who either did not care to give 
the world any accounts of these strange 
beings or who had interests in keeping 
everything regarding this rich country as 
secret as possible. Quite a long resi- 
dence, off and on, in our own Southwest 
country had somewhat familiarized me 
with the dwellings and relics of the cliff 
and cave dwellers «. that region, and, in 
common with the general opinion, I 



vi PREFACE. 

believed they belonged to a race wholly 
extinct, and with no direct or indirect 
living representatives, at least on the 
North American continent. Even when 
the first living cliff dwellers were found 
in Mexico I believed they were isolated 
cases of depraved savages having acquired 
ancient dwellings, as the very lowest 
order of our own people occasionally seek 
similar habitations on the outskirts of 
towns and cities. But I was certainly 
not prepared to believe that this singular 
and savage race was so extensively dis- 
tributed and so distinct from all others in 
its characteristics ; and this belief was 
undoubtedly universal, as shown in the 
comments elicited by the discovery. 
Whether there are any relations exist- 
ing between the extinct cliff and cave 
dwellers of our own country and those 



PREFACE. Vii 

now existing in Mexico is a technically 
scientific question that I was not prepared 
to investigate, both because the discovery 
was wholly unexpected, and (still more 
important) because destitute of a suffi- 
cient knowledge of the subject to do so. 
Had I been able to overcome both ob- 
stacles, however, I could have done no 
more than to leave the subject in the 
shape of an incomplete theory at the best, 
as all similar ethnological discussions 
have been left ; and I doubt if this would 
have added to or subtracted from the 
more definite purpose of being the first 
to consider them in any light whatsoever. 
Such information as I obtained regarding 
this most curious people and their strange 
country is related in the following pages. 
Frederick Schwatka. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Northwestern Chihuahua — Preparing for 
THE Expedition — From Deming, N. M., to 
Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, . . . i 

II. Northwestern Chihuahua {Continued) — Mex- 
ican Mormon Colonies — From La Ascencion 
to Corralitos — Some Ruins along the 
Tapasita — A Toltec Babylon, . . .34 

III . SoNORA — Along the Sonora Railway — Her- 
mosillo — Guaymas, and its Beautiful Har- 
bor — P'isHiNG and Hunting about Guaymas, 80 

IV. Central Chihuahua — From the City of 
Chihuahua Westward to the Great Mexi- 
can Mining Belt, 131 

V. Central Chihuahua — In the Land of the 
Living Cave and Cliff Dwellers — The 
Tarahumari Indians, Civilized and Savage, 172 

VI. Through the Sierra Madres — On Mule-back 

Westward from Carichic, .... 206 

VII. Southwestern Chihuahua — Among the Cave 
AND Cliff Dwellers in the Heart of the 
Sierra Madre Range, 227 

VIII. In Southwestern Chihuahua — Down the 
Urique Barranca — From Pine to Palm — 
Urique and its Mines, 265 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

IX. Southwestern Chihuahua — Description of 
One of the Richest Silver Regions of the 
World — Mineral Wealth of the Sierra 
Madres — The Batopilas District, . .311 

X. Southwestern Chihuahua — The Return by 
Another Trail — The CaRon of the 
Churches — Among the Cliff Dwellers, . 345 



IN THE LAND OF 

CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 



CHAPTER I. J 

] 

NORTHWESTERN CHIHUAHUA — PREPARING j 

FOR THE EXPEDITION FROM DEMING, i 

N. M., TO CASAS GRANDES, CHIHUAHUA. I 

'T^ HE first chapter describing an expe- 

-*■ dition is liable to be prosaic to the \ 

point of dullness. It is full of promises i 

that are expected to be realized, while as i 

yet nothing has been done. Not one- ^ ' 

tenth of these may formulate, and yet the I 

expedition may be a success in unex- '■ 

pected results ; for in no undertaking is j 

there so much uncertainty as in travel \ 



2 CAVE AND CUFF DWELLERS. 

through little known countries. Then, 
again, the writer is likely to consider him- 
self called upon to give a lengthy descrip- 
tion of the party in the preliminary letter, 
and, as I have often seen, even descend 
to an enumeration of the qualities of the 
cook or the color of the mules. The 
next night the cook may desert and the 
mules may run away, so that others must 
be procured, and therefore they are of no 
more interest to the reader than any other 
of the millions of cooks or mules that 
would make any writer wealthy if he 
could find a publisher who would print 
his description of them. I intend to 
break away from that stereotyped for- 
mula in this first chapter and briefly state 
that I was in the field of Northern Mex- 
ico, hoping to obtain new and interesting 
matter beyond the everlasting descrip- 



NORTHWESTERN CHIHUAHUA. 3 

tions that are now pumped up for the 
public by versatile writers along the 
beaten lines of tourist travel, as deter- 
mined by the railroads, and, occasionally, 
the diligence lines. I had a good outfit 
of wagons, horses, mules, and last, but not 
least, men for that purpose. Each and 
every member of the expedition will be 
heard from when anything has been done 
by them, and not before. When the mule 
Dulce kicks a hectare of daylight through 
the cook for spilling hot grease on his 
heels I will give a description of Dulce 
and an obituary notice of the cook ; but 
until then they will remain out of the 
account. 

We crossed the boundary south of 
Deming early in March, 1889, ^^^ 
entered Mexican territory, where our 
travels can be said to have begun. If one 



4 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

will take the pains to look at a map of 
this portion of Mexico he will see that it 
projects into the United States some dis- 
tance beyond the average northern bound- 
ary, the Rio Grande being to our east, 
and an " offset," as we would say in sur- 
veying, being to our west, this ''offset" 
running north and south. This flat pen- 
insula projecting into our own country 
can be better understood by visiting it 
and comparing it with the surrounding 
land of the United States, coupled with a 
history of the country. Roughly speak- 
ing, the Mexican-United States boundary, 
as settled by the Mexican War, followed 
the line of the Southern Pacific Railway 
as now constructed, and the so-called 
Gadsden purchase from Mexico of a few 
years later fixed the boundary as we now 
see it, giving us a narrow, sabulous strip 



PREPARING FOR THE EXPEDITION. 7 

of Mexican territory, but a definite bound- 
ary, easily established by surveys. 

The Mexicans were on the ground and 
knew just what they were doing when 
they arranged for selling us this narrow 
strip; while, as usual, we did everything 
from Washington, and knew just about 
as little concerning it as we possibly 
could and be sure we were purchasing a 
part of Mexico. The Mexicans ran this 
flat-topped peninsula far to the north, 
inclosing lakes, rivers, and springs, and 
waters innumerable ; while, as a gener- 
ous compensation, they gave us more 
land to the west, but a land where a 
coyote carries three days' rations of 
jerked jack rabbit whenever he makes up 
his mind to cross it. There is no more 
comparison between the offset of Mexico 
that projects here into the United States, 



8 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

and the offset from the United States 
that projects into Mexico west of here, 
than there is in comparing the fertile 
plains of Iowa or Illinois with Greenland 
or the Great Sahara Desert. 

Everyone familiar with the exceed- 
ingly rich lands of the Southwest, when 
so much of it is worthless for want of 
water, knows how valuable that liquid is 
in this region, especially if it occurs in 
quantities sufficiently large for the pur- 
poses of irrigation. I have stood on 
land that I could purchase for five 
cents an acre or less, and that stretched 
out behind me for limitless leagues, and 
could jump on other land whose owner 
had refused a number of hundreds of 
dollars an acre, although, as far as the 
eye could see, there was no more differ- 
ence between them than between any 



DEMING TO CASAS GRAND ES. 9 

two adjoining acres on an Illinois farm. 
The real difference was one to be deter- 
mined by the surveyor's level, which 
showed that water could be put oh the 
valuable tract and not on the other. 
This also is the difference between the 
Mexican "offset" in the North, lying 
between the Rio Grande and the me- 
ridianal boundary to the west, and the 
American tract that juts into Mexico just 
west of this again. They both share the 
same soil as you gaze at them from the 
deck of your *' burro," and you can even 
see no difference in them on closer in- 
spection, after your mule has assisted 
you to alight ; but there is a real and 
tangible value difference of from one 
hundred to two hundred dollars a year 
per acre between the grapes and other 
fruits and vegetables you can raise on 



lO CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

one, with water trickling round their 
roots, and the sagebrush and grease 
wood of the other, not rating at ten cents 
a township. 

The diplomats of our country at 
Washington may be all Talleyrands in 
astuteness, but in the Gadsden purchase 
they got left so far behind that they have 
never yet been able to see how badly 
they were handled in the bargain. 

As our people travel along the line of 
the Southern Pacific Railway, through its 
arid wastes of sand and sunshine, they 
can little realize the beautiful country of 
Northern Chihuahua and Sonora that 
lies so close to them to the southward. 
And yet some of this seemingly arid land 
in Southern New Mexico and Arizona 
is destined to become of far more value 
than its present appearance would indi- 



DEMING TO CASAS GRAND ES. li 

cate. Anglo-Saxon energy is converting 
little patches here and there into fertile 
spots, and these are constantly increas- 
ing. A great portion of the land is fine 
for cattle grazing, and these little oases 
make centers of crystallizing civilization, 
which render the country for miles 
around valuable for this important in- 
dustry. 

The persons who believe that New 
Mexico will not eventually become one 
of the finest States in our Union belong 
to the class of those who put Dakota, 
Nebraska, and Kansas in the great 
American desert a decade or two ago. 

There is still another physical feature 
of at least Northern Mexico that I have 
never seen dwelt upon, even in the nu- 
merous physical geographies that are now 
extant, and it is well worth explaining. 



12 C.irii .'LVD CLIFF DWFLLERS. J 

Books innumerable have spoken of the i 

ticrra calientc, or low, hot lands near the i 
coast, the tierra tonplada, or temperate 

lands of the interior plateaus, and the • 

ticrra frm, or cold lands of the moun- ■ 

i 

tains and higher plateaus ; and these sub- j 

i 

divisions are really good as explaining j 

Mexican climate, but they give us but | 
little idea of the country's surface itself 

beyond that of altitude, and even less re~ I 

garding its resources and adaptability to i 

the wants of man. The tierra caliente, j 

or hot lands of the coast, are out of the i 
question as habitations for white men ; 

but the ticrra templada and ticrra fria, \ 

as everyone familiar with climatology ! 

knows, gives us the finest climate in the ' 

world, as do all elevated plateaus in sub. ! 

tropical countries. But these elevated \ 

plateaus, or different portions of them, I 



DEMING TO CASAS GRANDE S. 1 3 

are not alike in resources, and their varia- 
tions are simply due to the variations in 
the water supply. 

The backbone ridge of mountains in 
Mexico is the Sierra Madre, or Mother 
Mountains, for from them all other 
ridges and spurs seem to emanate. From 
their crests, as with all other mountains 
in the world, spring innumerable rivulets 
and creeks, which, uniting, form rivers. 
But nearly everywhere else these streams 
increase in size by the addition of the 
waters of other tributaries until they reach 
the sea. 

Not so with the Mexican rivers of this 
locality. Shortly after leaving the moun- 
tains and reaching the foothills, they re- 
ceive no additions from other sources, 
and after flowing from fifty to one hun- 
dred miles they sink into the ground. 



14 CAVK AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

These "sinks" are usually large lakes, 
and a map of the country would make one 
believe that the rivers were emptying 
into them, but in reality they only disap- 
pear as just stated, to reappear in the hot 
lands as the heads of rivers. Now all the 
country between the Sierra Madre and the 
"sinks," or at least all the valley country, 
can be readily irrigated by this peren- 
nial flow of water. The rivers are fringed 
with trees, and the grass is in excellent 
condition, while beyond, the plains are 
treeless, the soil arid, and the prospect 
cheerless in comparison. To particular- 
ize : if the reader looks at the map of 
Chihuahua he will see a series of lakes 
(they are the "sinks" to which I refer) : 
Laguna de Guzman, Laguna (the Spanish 
for lake) de Santa Maria, Laguna de 
Patos, etc., extending nearly north and 



DEMING TO CASAS GR ANDES. 15 

south, and parallel with the crest of the 
Sierra Madres. Between the lakes and 
the crest is a beautiful country, capable of 
sustaining a dense population ; while out- 
side of it, to the eastward, so much cannot 
be said in its favor, although probably the 
latter is a good grazing district. Now 
the railway runs outside or eastward of 
the line of the "sinks," where the country 
is flat and the engineering difficulties are 
at a minimum ; and as nearly all the 
descriptions we have of Mexico are based 
upon observations made from car windows, 
it is easy to see how erroneous an opinion 
can be formed of this northern portion of 
Mexico, which is so constantly, though 
conscientiously, misrepresented by scores 
of writers. 

The first lake we came to in Mexico 
was Laguna Las Palomas (the Doves), 



l6 CAFE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. \ 

only a few miles beyond the boundary, ; 

and to secure which Mexico was smart i 

i 

enouofh to eet in the offset to which | 

I have referred. It is, I think, the "sink" | 

of the Mimbres River, which, as a river, | 

Hes wholly in the southwestern portion of | 

i 
New Mexico. It disappears, however, l 

before it crosses the boundary, to reappear i 

as sixty or seventy huge springs in Mex- | 

ico (any one of these would be worth i 

$20,000 to $25,000 as water is now sold \ 

in the arid districts), which drain into | 

a beautiful lake, backed by a high sierra, j 

the Las Palomas Mountains, altoo^ether i 

forming a very picturesque scene. All j 

the country around is quite level, and j 

thousands of acres can here be irrigated : 

with this enormous water supply ; while i 

it can only be done by the quarter sec- | 

tion in the Southwest on our side of the ! 



DEMING TO CASAS GRANDE S. i? 

line, except, probably, in a few rare 
instances. 

This was a favorite " stamping ground " 
of the more warlike bands of Apache 
Indians but a few years ago. The water 
and grass for their ponies and the game 
for themselves made it their veritable 
Garden of Eden ; settlement, therefore, 
was out of the question until these bold 
marauders could be ejected with powder 
and lead. Not two leagues to the north 
the road from Deming, N. M., to Las 
Palomas passes over two graves of as 
many Apaches, killed a few years ago ; 
while on a hill hard by can be seen three 
crescent-shaped heaps of stones where 
the great Apache chief Victorio, with 
three or four score warriors, made a stand 
against the combined forces of the 
United States and Mexico, which proved 



l8 CAF£ AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

entirely too much for him in the resulting 
combat. More worthless or meaner In- 
dians were never driven out of a country 
than were the Apaches after they had 
found this region uninhabitable, or at least 
unbearable for their murderous methods 
of life ; and for much of the decisive 
action that led to this desirable end we 
have to thank the Mexicans. 

The way the Las Palomas Mountains I 
have of rising sheer out of a level country j 
is quite common in this region, plainly 
showing that the mountains once rose 
from a great sea that washed their bases, 
and when it receded with the uplifting of 
this region it left the level plain to show \ 
where its flat bottom had been ages before, j 

A fine example of this is seen in the 

i 
mountains called Tres Hermanas (the | 

Three Sisters), very near the boundary i 




TRES HERMANAS. 



DEMING TO CASAS GR ANDES. 21 

line, and but a few miles from the wagon 
road leading from Deming south into old 
Mexico. They form an interesting fea- 
ture in the landscape as viewed from the 
railway on approaching Deming, and are 
the subject of an illustration by our artist. 
Sometimes a single peak just gets its 
head above the level plain by a few 
hundred feet, while again, great ranges 
extend for miles, their tops covered with 
snow in the winter months. However 
long that level plain may be, it always 
extends without break or interruption to 
the next range. A railway would have 
but little trouble, so far as grades are 
concerned, in orettine throuofh this coun- 
try. It might be necessary to wind a 
great deal to avoid hills and mountains, 
but if the constructors were lavish with 
rails and ties, and did not mind mileage, 



22 CAFE AND CUFF DWELLERS. 

the grade would be almost as simple as 
building on a floor ; in fact it is the floor 
of an old inland ocean. 

A profile view of some of these ranges 
and isolated peaks gives some very 
grotesque as well as picturesque views, 
and imaginative people of the Southwest 
fancy they see many silhouette designs 
in the crests of the mountains. Faces 
seem to predominate, and especially is 
Montezuma's face quite lavishly dis- 
tributed over this reoion. I think I can 
recall at least a half dozen of them in the 
Southwest since I first visited there in 
1867. This unfortunate Aztec monarch 
must have had a very rocky looking face, 
or his descendants must have thought 
exceeding well of him to sculpture him 
so often, even in fancy, upon the moun- 
tain crests. 



DEMING TO CASAS GRAND ES. 23 

I went into a little face-making business 
of my own, so as to keep along in the 
custom of the country while I was there. 
The most southerly peak of the Florida 
range had quite a well-defined face, 
upturned to the sky, that, to my imagina- 
tion, looked more like the well-known 
face of Benjamin Franklin than any other 
of nature's sculpturing so often portrayed 
in mountains when assisted by the fancy 
of man. 

Before leaving Las Palomas our 
material underwent inspection by the 
customs officials, and no people could 
Lave been more polite and considerate 
than were these officers toward us, giving 
us our necessary papers without putting 
us to the inconvenience of unpacking our 
many boxes and bundles. There is this 
peculiarity about Mexican frontier cus- 



24 CAVE AND CUFF DWELLERS. 

toms : after passing the first one you are 
by no means through with them, for the 
next two, three, or even four towns may 
also have customhouse officers. I was 
in a Mexican town, La Ascencion, and 
had a wagon unloaded before I knew 
they had a customhouse. I expected to 
be shot at reveille the next morning ; 
but instead they politely passed all my 
personal baggage without even asking 
to see it, simply examining the papers 
received at the first customhouse. 

After leaving Las Palomas our course 
lay southward across a high mesa, or 
table-land, until we reached the Boca 
Grande River. The scenery along the 
Boca Grande is picturesque and some- 
what peculiar. The river bottom is flat, 
very wide, and rich in soil ; but on the 
flanks rise the Mexican mountains sheer 



DEMING TO CASAS GR ANDES. 27 

out of the plains. To the west are the 
Sierra Madres, covered with snow on the 
highest peaks, making some of the most 
beautiful views I have ever seen as pre- 
sented from different points along the 
river's course. One of them, Pacheco 
Peak, in the Boca Grande range (named 
after the Mexican Minister of the Inte- 
rior), is shown in the illustration. Slight 
spurs and mesa lands extend from the 
sierras in the valleys and often reach the 
river bank, thereby forcing the road over 
them, but affording a foundation that any 
macadamized highway in our own coun- 
try might emulate. Some of these 
ridges were ornamented with groupings 
of cactus (of the oquetilla variety), if 
their presence can be called an orna- 
ment. Imagine a dozen fishing rods, 
from ten to fifteen feet in length, all 



28 CAVE AND CLIFF DU'FI.T.ERS. 

radiatiiiL; from a central point like a 
bouquet of bayonets, and each rod hold- 
ing- hundreds of spikes throughout its 




OQUETII.I.A CACTUS. 



length. You will thus have a faint idea 
of the appearance of a bunch of oquetilla 
cactus. These bunches seem to prefer 
growing along the rocky crests in rows 
of tolerable regularity that, to a person 
at a distance, suggest the work of human 
hands. 



DEMIXG TO CASAS GRAXDES. 29 

We traveled some thirty miles along 
the river without seeino- a living thino- 
except a few jack rabbits and coyotes, 
when suddenly we rounded a bend of the 
beautiful Boca Grande and came upon a 
stretch of valley covered with zacaton 
grass, and which in a few years will be a 
valuable ranche. Across this we saw 
two as hard-looking characters approach- 
ing us as ever cut a throat. I was pre- 
paring to hand over to them all my 
Mexican money and other valuables 
when they politely touched their hats 
and simply said, " Documentos." Here, 
again, in the far-off woods and hills 
were more customhouse officials. These 
men w^ere here to prevent smugglers 
from crossing the border between the 
towns and established highways. 

We lunched that day on Espia Hill, 



3° CAVK AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

used formerly as a customhouse post of 
observation, but the Apache chief Geron- 
imo, raiding- through here, collected a 
poll tax of one scalp apiece, and since 
then the post has been abandoned. A 
short distance further the river changes 
from the Boca Grande to the Casas 
Grandes. 

The Boca Grande and the Casas 
Grandes are the same river, like the 
Wind River and the Big Horn in our 
own country, the two changing names at 
a certain point. In other words, they 
have the same river bed, for in the dry- 
est seasons the Casas Grandes sinks 
and reappears further down as the Boca 
Grande, the two streams being really 
identical most of the way, however, and 
both of them emptying into the great 
" sink " known as Laguna Guzman. I 



DEMING TO CASAS GRANDE S. 31 

noticed one peculiarity of the rocky soil 
on the ridofes extendingr down from the 
foothills of the mountains that I have 
never seen elsewhere, and might not have 
noticed even here had it not been pointed 
out to me by one of my guides. Great 
areas of the soil were covered with stones, 
mostly flat in shape, and so numerous 
that but little vegetation could exist 
between them. A decidedly desolate 
aspect was thus presented ; indeed no 
one would believe that anything except 
the oquetilla cactus could possibly grow 
here. One of my Mexican men, how- 
ever, assured me that the stones were 
only on the surface, and that by removing 
them the richest of red soil could be 
found underneath, not affording a single 
stone in a cubic yard of earth. The soil 
had not been washed away when the rains 



32 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. \ 

beat down upon it, as this " top-dressing " j 
of flat rock had shielded it from such 
action, protecting it, let us hope, for the 
future use of man. They told me this \ 
peculiar kind was the richest and most 
easily cultivated soil in Mexico, but it \ 
looked, with its covering of rocks, poor I 
enough to put in some terrestrial alms- j 
house along with the Sahara Desert. j 
This whole Southwest, or rather North- j 
west from a Mexican standpoint, is a ' 
country of deceptive appearances. Hun- 
dreds of my readers have probably , 
traveled over the Santa Fe Railway as it I 
courses through the Rio Grande valley, j 
and, recalling the grassy, pleasant-looking \ 
country in the East, have wondered how ^ 
this cheerless area of sand and sagebrush ] 
could ever be utilized. Yet in this valley j 
is a farm of twenty-two acres for which | 



DEMING TO CASAS GRANDE S. 33 

sixty thousand dollars has been flatly 
refused, although not one cent of its 
value is due to its proximity to any 
important point (as the fact is with the 
valuable little farms around our Eastern 
cities), but solely to what it will produce. 
Verily the desolation of the land is 
deceptive, and, like beauty, is but skin 
deep. 



CHAPTER II. 

NORTHWESTERN CHIHUAHUA (cONTINUED) 

MEXICAN MORMON COLONIES FROM 

LA ASCENSION TO CORRALITOS SOME 

RUINS ALONG THE TAPASITA A TOLTEC 

BABYLON. 

TT is sixty to sixty-five miles from Las 
•^ Palomas to La Ascension, and not a 
settlement or a sign of life except jack 
rabbits, coyotes, and customhouse offi- 
cers is to be seen throughout the whole 
length of this unusually rich country, 
so effectually did the Apaches enforce 
their restrictive tariff but a few years 
ago. At rare intervals great haciendas 
are found in these rich valleys, the main 

34 



NORTHWESTERN CHIHUAHUA. 35 

industry of which is cattle raising. We 
passed a herd of about a thousand head 
just before reaching La Ascension, all in 
magnificent condition, and attended by 
some eight or ten vaqtteros, who were 
drivincf them to market. With the usual 
Mexican politeness they took particular 
pains to give us the road ; and to do so 
drove the whole herd over a high hill, 
around the base of which the road ran. 

Just before reaching La Ascension we 
came to the Mormon colony of Diaz 
(named by them in honor of the pres- 
ent President of the Mexican Republic), 
numbering about fifty families. A dis- 
cussion of their religious tenets is clearly 
and fortunately out of my province, not 
only from its heavy, dreary character, but 
for the reason that everything wise and 
otherwise about Mormonism has already 



36 CAFE AXD CLIFF DWELLERS. 

been put before those who care to read 
it. But entirely aside from the subject 
of polygamy, which has so completely 
obscured every other point about these 
people, they have one characteristic 
which is seldom heard of in connection 
with them and their wanderings in the 
Western wilderness. I refer to their 
building up of new countries. They 
have no peer in pioneering among the 
Caucasian races. They are so far ahead 
of the Gentiles in organized and discrimi- 
nating, businesslike colonization, that the 
latter are not close enough to them to per- 
mit a comparison that would show their 
inferiority. Of course they (the Mor- 
mons) see in their belief an ample expla- 
nation for this excellence ; it is far more' 
probable, however, as I look at it from 
my Gentile point of view, that it is due 



MEXICAN MORMON COLONIES. 37 

to the peculiar organization of their 
Church, which so fits them for the work of 
making the wilderness blossom as the rose. 
No other Christian Church exercises so 
much authority over the temporal affairs 
of its members as the Mormon Church. 
However debatable this exercise of au- 
thority may be in civilized communities, 
surrounded by people of the same kind, 
there is no doubt in my mind as to its 
favorable effect upon pioneer associa- 
tions, encompassed by enemies in man 
and nature. This view of the subject 
must be admitted by everyone who has 
grown up on the Gentile frontier and 
seen the innumerable bickerings between 
adjacent towns, the internal dissensions 
in the towns themselves, the rivalry 
for "booms," the shotgun contests for 
county seats, the thousands of exaggera- 



38 a^lFE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

tions about their own interests, and the 
hundreds of depreciations about those of 
others adjoining-. As in its spiritual, so 
in its temporal affairs, the authority of 
the Mormon Church is remarkable for its 
effective power of centralization.. It judi- 
cially settles all questions for the general, 
not the individual good ; and upon this 
principle it determines, by the character 
of the soil, and by the natural routes of 
travel, where colonies shall locate, as 
well as what are the probable opportuni- 
ties for propagation of the faith. It is 
not at all surprising to one who has 
observed these facts that an organized 
faith of almost any character should have 
flourished, though surrounded by so 
much disorganization. 

As a rule, at least from two to four 
years of quiet are needed after an Indian 



MEXICAN MORMON COLONIES. 39 

war to restore such confidence among 
the whites that they can settle the dis- 
turbed district in a bona-fide way. I 
should, however, except the Mormons 
from this class, but to do so without 
an explanation would appear somewhat 
unreasonable. Their longr and almost 
constant frontier experience has taught 
them how to weigh Indian matters cor- 
rectly, as well as others pertaining to the 
ragged edge of civilization. Although 
the x^paches had been subdued a dozen 
times by the Mexican and American 
governments alternatel}-, they knew 
when the subduing meant subjugation, 
and before Geronimo and his cabinet 
were halfway to the orange groves of 
Florida, Mormon wagon poles were 
pointing to the rich valleys of North- 
western Chihuahua. 



4° CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

They number here a few hundred 
families, a mere fraction in view of all 
the available land of the magnificent val- 
leys of the Casas Grandes, Boca Grande, 
Santa Maria, and others ; and they never 
will predominate politically or in num- 
bers over the other inhabitants if we 
include the Mexican population, which 
is almost universally Catholic. In fact, 
those already established seem content 
merely to settle down and be let alone ; 
this end they attain by purchase of tracts 
of land over which they can throw their 
authority and be a little community unto 
themselves, neither disturbing nor wish- 
ing to be disturbed by others. 

Their success has already invited the 
more avaricious, but less coldly calcula- 
ting Gentile ; and while it is stating it a 
little strong to say there is a "boom," 



MEXICAN MORMON COLONIES. 41 

or even indications of one, within the 
thirty to sixty miles between villages, 
my conscience is not disturbed in saying 
that I can at least agree with the great 
American poet that, 

We hear the first low wash of waves 
Where soon shall roll a human sea. 

Already a railway was talked of, and the 
usual undue excitement was manifested. 
Every stranger was supposed to have 
something to do with it. Even my own 
little expedition was thought to be a sort 
of preliminary reconnoissance. I have 
never constructed a railway in my life, but 
I have been along the advancing lines of 
a number of new ones, and have seen 
them grow from two iron rails in a wilder- 
ness to a great country. I do not recall 
any that had much brighter prospects 



42 CAFE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

ahead than the proposed one along the 
eastern slopes of the Sierra Madres. 
That it must be built some day the 
resources of the country clearly demand, 
and it is to be hoped that it will be at as 
early a date as possible. 

At La Ascension we were greatly in- 
debted to Mr. Francis, a young English 
gentleman, who literally placed his house 
at our disposal, giving up his own room 
for our comfort. As there were no inns 
in La Ascension except those of the 
lowest order, this generous hospitality of 
the only Englishman in the town was 
warmly appreciated by us. One of our 
wagons having met with a slight accident, 
we remained over Sunday to await repairs. 
As soon as this was known to the inhabi- 
tants invitations began to pour in to attend 
cockfights, and one of especial magnitude 



LA ASCENSION TO CORRALITOS. 43 

was organized in our honor. The finest 
cocks in the place were to take part, and 
\h.^ presidente or mayor of the town would 
preside. Then, to add distinction to the 
already exciting programme, a baile or ball 
was hastily gotten up for the evening. 
Hospitality could go no farther in this 
out-of-the-way town, for the people were 
really not rich enough to support a bull- 
fight. Early in the morning, before the 
population had recovered from the dissipa- 
tions of the previous night, we bade our 
hospitable host "good-by," and, wrapped 
in our- heaviest coats against the chill 
morning air, we started southward toward 
Corralitos, about thirty-five or forty miles 
away. After crossing wide mesas and 
threading our way around the bases of 
many picturesque groups of mountains, 
we came to the Casas Grandes River and 



44 CAVE AXD CUFF DWELLERS. 

valley, and along this stream, literally alive 
with ducks, we traveled for some hours. 
It was a great temptation to get out the 
guns and shoot at the ducks that were 
calmly sailing by us on the broad and 
rapid stream ; but as we had neither dog 
nor boat it would have been impossible 
to secure them had we done so. The 
consoling thought was ours that the 
hacienda was not far distant, and there 
we would likely find everything necessary 
to assist us in this or any other sport. 

Approaching the hacienda we passed 
immense droves of horses and cattle oraz- 
ing on the rich bottom lands. Corralitos 
has a very pretty, an almost poetical name, 
but it loses much of its romantic charac- 
ter when it is known that it is named for 
some old, dilapidated sheep pens that 
once existed here, corralitos being little 



LA ASCENSION TO CORRALITOS. 45 

pens or little corrals. It is a hacienda, 
some eighty or ninety years old, with an 
extremely interesting history, that would 
make a book more thrilling than any fic- 
tion. The main building is a great square 
inclosure with very thick walls, having 
many loopholes for guns, and high turrets 
or towers at the corners. To enter the 
building are massive gates, while inside 
are a number of courts with other o-ates 
leading to other inclosures, and making- 
the interior building appear like a small 
town. Here during the fierce Apache 
raids the whole population was gathered 
for protection, and the crack of Apache 
rifles has often been heard around the 
thick walls. Dons of Spanish blood have 
extracted fortunes from the mountain 
sides near by in mines that have been 
worked since shortly after the Conquest. 



46 CAF£ AND CLIFF DWELLERS. \ 

It is a hacienda of about a million acres 
in extent, and one of the most beautiful in 
the whole State of Chihuahua, the Casas 
Grandes River running for some thirty 1 
miles throutjh the estate. The true i 
hacienda, of which we hear so much in 
Mexican narration, is really a definite area j 
of twenty-two thousand acres, but the 
name is now used so as to mean almost ! 
any estate, whether large or small, under 
one manasfement. With the advance of ; 
railways haciendas are slowly disappear- i 
ing-, and will soon exist only in poetry 
or fiction. 

The views from the hacienda are beau- 
tiful in the extreme. To the east lies 
a range of mountains filled with seams of ~ ' 
silver, the Corralitos Company working 
some thirty to forty mines ; while one 
hundred and fifty to two hundred " pros- 



LA ASCENSION TO CORRALITOS. 47 

pects " await development. These mines 
have been known and worked since the 
Spaniards entered this part of Mexico. 
To the west of the hacienda flows the 
Casas Grandes River, flanked on either 
side by enormous old cottonwood trees ; 
while for a background rise the immense 
peaks of the Sierra Madres, covered with 
snow, and breaking into all sorts of fantas- 
tic shapes as they extend down toward 
the river. 

The Corralitos Company is owned 
mainly in the United States, New York 
capitalists being the principal stock- 
holders. 

While at Diaz City I had learned from 
Dr. W. Derby Johnson, the ecclesiastical 
head of the Mormon colonies in Upper 
Chihuahua, that at the lower colony on 
the Piedras Verdes River a number of 



48 CAVE A. YD CLIFF DWELLERS. 

ancient Aztec ruins were to be seen, very 
few of wliich had ever been heard of 
before. I determined to visit them as 
soon as possible, for the reason that Mr. 
Macdonald, the business managrer of the 
lower colony, was expecting to leave 
shortly for Salt Lake City. This gentle- 
man was unusually well acquainted with 
the country of the Piedras Verdes, having 
spent months in surveying it, and being 
more familiar with its ancient ruins than 
any other man living. Fortunately Dr. 
Johnson was going through to see him — 
a two days' trip — so to a certain extent 
we joined our forces for that time. Ex- 
pecting to return to Corralitos, we left 
early one morning for a drive of about 
sixty miles to the lower Mormon colony 
of Juarez, named after Mexico's greatest 
President since the war of independence. 



LA ASCENSION TO CORRALITOS. 49 

Twenty-five or thirty miles to the 
south of CorraHtos we came to the town 
of Casas Grandes, said to consist of 
three thousand inhabitants, but we did 
not see three people as we drove through 
its seemingly deserted streets. It is the 
most important town in the valley, both 
historically and in point of numbers. It 
takes its name, meaning "big houses," 
from the ancient ruins situated in its 
suburbs, and comprising the largest 
found in this part of Mexico when it was 
first visited by Europeans many years 
ago. The name of the town has also 
been applied to the river which flows 
just in front of it, and which is formed 
by the junction of two others, the San 
Miguel and Piedras Verdes. The San 
Miguel is the straight line prolongation 
of the Casas Grandes, and is apparently 



50 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

the true stream ; but the Piedras Verdes 
is the more important, as its waters are 
perennially replenished by branches 
which rise in the never-failing springs 
of the sierras to the west. At Casas 
Grandes we left the river and struck out 
inland for the little Mormon colony on 
the Piedras Verdes River, a distance of 
some twenty or twenty-five miles. Like 
all other distances in this part of Mex- 
ico, there is not a sign of civilization 
between, not even a camping place, al- 
though the country traversed is a fine 
one for cattle grazing, with numerous 
beautiful valleys where farms could be 
made remunerative, and where three or 
four dozen houses ouoht to be seen if 
a tenth part of the country's resources 
were developed. As we crossed stretch 
after stretch of beautiful prairie, watered 



LA ASCENSION TO CORRALITOS. 51 

by many little mountain streams, it 
seemed as though only a short time must 
pass before this fertile country would be 
dotted with hundreds of homes and 
thousands of cattle on its grassy hills. 
The meaning of Piedras Verdes is green 
rocks, but the rock projections in cliff, 
hill, or stream, are of all imaginable 
shades, not only of green, but of red, 
yellow, brown, rose, and even blue. The 
effect is inconceivably beautiful against 
the wonderful blue sky of this part 
of Mexico. Just before reaching the 
Mormon colony you come to a high 
ridge from which can be seen the little 
town nestling along the banks of the pic- 
turesque Piedras Verdes River. It is a 
scene seldom surpassed in beauty. Far 
to the west are the grand Sierra Madres, 
crested with snow, while nearer, the 



52 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

great shaggy hills, covered with timber, 
and the many bright-colored rocks be- 
tween, make up a picture that neither 
poet nor painter could depict. 

Juarez is a bright-looking little town of 
some fifty families, who raise all their own 
fruits and vegetables, and have a goodly 
supply for the less thrifty people of the 
surrounding country. Our party was 
kindly cared for by two or three of the 
Mormon families, as there were no other 
places of shelter beside their homes. • 
The next day we started to visit the 
ancient ruins on the Tapasita River (a 
branch of the Piedras Verdes), which 
flows through as beautiful a little valley 
as I ever saw. Mr. Macdonald, the sur- 
veyor of this tract, kindly consented to 
accompany us, although he was overbur- 
dened with business incidental to starting 



SOME RUINS ALONG THE TAPASITA. 53 

the next day for Salt Lake City. In the 
Tapasita valley I expected to find only a 
single well-defined group of ruins. Imag- 
ine my surprise, then, upon discovering 
that the entire country, especially in its 
valleys, was covered with such evidences. 
A high hill, called the Picacho de Torreon, 
had been occupied on its southern face by 
cliff dwellers ; at our feet was a mass of 
rubbish that indicated a ruin of the latter 
people. Twelve miles up the Tapasita 
was still another extensive ruin of stone, 
while the intervening space was constantly 
marked by similar remains. In fact, as 
before stated, the whole valley was one 
vast continuation of ruins. We were 
surely on ground once occupied by 
an ancient and dense population — where 
the fertile resources of the country will 
again sustain another and a far more civ- 



54 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

ilized race. Even Juarez City found a 
great many such mounds on its site, and 
dicTo-ino- into some of them has revealed 
much of interest. Just before our arrival 
a pot or jar had been taken from one of 




ANCIENT JAR UNEARTHED AT JUAREZ CITY. 



the mounds, and was bought by me of the 
young boy who unearthed it. It is like 
many other jars from Casas Grandes, as 
well as from better known ruins, and that 
have already figured in works on Mexico. 
It differs, however, from most of them in 
having upon it the figure of a bird, as 



SOME RUINS ALONG THE TAPASITA. 55 

representations of animals of any sort are 
very unusual upon their decorated sur- 
faces. The bird seems more nearly to 
resemble the chaparral cock or California 
road runner than any other bird in this 
part of the world. Geometrical desio-ns 
are frequent, and of these the zigzag, 
stairlike forms are the most common. 
Many other things had been found in this 
mound, including a number of utensils of 
pottery, together with the human bones 
of their makers. No doubt similar relics, 
with some variations, could be found in 
all these mounds. We saw, I think, many 
hundreds of these ruins in the Piedras 
Verdes region, most of them merely 
mounds suggestive of what they once 
were. Ancient ditches could also be 
plainly made out along the hillsides, 
showing that the former inhabitants cul- 



56 CAFE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. \ 

tivated the rich soil of the valleys. They ^ 
well understood the value of water, too, j 
for around the bases of the small, stream- j 
less valleys leading into the watered ones j 
were damlike terraces, evidently designed | 
to catch and retain the water after show- i 
ers until it was needed in the irrigating \ 
ditches. On the top of high hills adja- 
cent were fortified places, apparently : 
where they must have fled in times of j 
danger from other tribes. They were a | 
wonderful and interesting people, one \ 
that would repay careful study, even from i 
the little evidence of their existence that 

is left. \ 

On the Tapasita we came upon the | 

ruins of what must have been a large j 

city of these people— the largest we saw 1 

in that part of the country. The only , 

life we saw there was a mountain lion I 



1 



SOME RUIXS ALONG THE TAP A SI TA. 57 

or panther, that came trotting along the 
valley until it saw us, \Yhen it turned 
back into the mountains. Truly the 
wild beasts were wandering over the 
Toltec Babylon. 

It is impossible for an artist to convey 
in plain black and white any idea of the 
beauty of this country ; it is a land 
requiring the painter to exhibit its beau- 
ties. 

One of the interesting peculiarities 
of the numerous ruins found throughout 
this portion of the country, and that indi- 
cates a once dense population living off 
the soil, is the way in which most of 
them seem to have met their fate. 
When a ruined house is dug into all the 
skeletons of its occupants are found in 
what may be termed the combined 
kitchen and eating room, — these two 



58 CAFE AND CUFF DWELLERS. 

rooms being in one,— and always near a 
fire-place. The postures of these skele- 
tons are as various as it is possible for 
the human body to assume. They are 
found kneeling, stretched out, sometimes 
with their locked hands over their heads, 
on their sides, and, again, with their chil- 
dren in their arms, hardly any two being 
alike in the same house or series of 
houses, where they were united into a 
pueblo. Now in the whole stlidy of sep- 
ulture it has been ' almost universally 
found that even among the lowest sav- 
ages as well as among the most civilized 
peoples, whatever form of burial is 
adopted, no matter how absurd from our 
point of view, it is uniform in the main 
points, allowing, of course, slight devia- 
tions for caste or rank. The positions 
of the skeletons in their own houses do 



SOME RUINS ALONG THE TAPASITA. 59 

not accord with this general fact, and 
have led some to believe that this race 
was destroyed by an earthquake or other 
violent action of nature. 

I had a long talk with Mr. Davis, 
superintendent of the Corralitos Com- 
pany, who has made a study of these 
ancient ruins from having them almost 
forced upon his attention. That gentle- 
man not only believes they were cut off 
by a violent earthquake, as I have sug- 
gested, but that this great cataclysm 
caup-ht them at their evenino- meal. He 
infers the latter fact from a consideration 
of the customs of the present almost pure- 
blooded Indians here, who must have 
descended from the older race, althouofh, 
singularly enough, knowing nothing of 
their ancient progenitors. The evening 
meal is the only occasion when they are 



6o CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. j 

i 

all gathered together at home. The ! 
earthquake must have been a very severe 
one, and have brought down the large j 
buildings upon the occupants before they ! 
could escape. This region is not espe- 
cially liable to such disasters. That it 
has them, however, occasionally, and 
severe ones too, is shown by the Bavispe 
earthquake of a few years ago, when that ■ 
town was destroyed, some forty people 
killed, and the whole country shaken up. i 
Mr. Davis goes on with his theory that : 
the survivors were thus exposed to the \ 
mercy of their enemies (that they had 
enemies before is shown by their fortifi- 
cations adjoioing almost every village), I 
and became cliff dwellers as a last resource '• 
to escape the fury of their old assailants. 
These, probably, were savages by com- ! 
parison ; and, living in savage homes, as j 



A TOLTEC BABYLON. 6i 

skin tents or wikeyups, and other light 
abodes, they suffered Httle from the great 
commotion referred to. When the par- 
tially vanquished race became strong 
enough they wandered southward as the 
first, or among the first, Toltec excursions 
in that direction. 

While at Corralitos Mr. Davis told 
me of some ruins situated about half- 
way between his hacienda and Casas 
Grandes, near Barranca. I visited them 
next day, and found a very noticeable 
and well-defined road leading straight up 
a hill to a slight bench overtopped by a 
higher hill at the end of the bench. 
Here was an ancient ruin, built of stone, 
and looking very much like a position of 
defense. It may have been a sacrificial 
place, for otherwise I cannot account for 
the careful construction of the road. 



62 CAl-E AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

For defensive purposes it would not 
have been needed, especially one so well 
made ; but observation has taught me 
that, when no other reasonable explana- 
tion can be found for doing a thing, 
superstitious or religious motives can be 
consistently introduced to account for it. 
This hill was really an outlying one from 
a larger near by and overlooking it. 
After climbing up the latter about half- 
way a series of stone buildings, not dis- 
cernible from the bottom, were clearly 
made out. They encircled the hill, and 
about halfway between these and the 
top of the hill was another row of encir- 
cling buildings, faintly recognized by 
their ruins, although the masonry was of 
the best character. On the top of the 
hill was a fortification, with a well prob- 
ably about twenty feet from the summit, 



A TOLTEC BABYLON. 63 

overtopped and almost hidden by a hang- 
ing mesquite bush. At the base of both 
hills was a series of mounds extending as 
far as the eye could reach. I almost 
fear to place an estimate on their num- 
ber, nor can I positively say they repre- 
sented buildings at all. In all or nearly 
all other mounds there is some sign of 
the house walls protruding through the 
dibris ; here I found none, but they 
closely resemble the other mounds ex- 
cept in this respect. Everything goes to 
show that these people were on the de- 
fensive, and that defense was often neces- 
sary. The ruins looked very much older 
than any others I had visited, but that 
can in a measure be accounted for, I 
think, by the sandy character of the dis- 
trict. Nothing makes an abandoned 
building or other work of man look so 



64 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

antiquated as drifting sand piled up 
around it. This town, therefore, may 
have been contemporaneous with the 
ruined towns of the Casas Grandes val- 
ley generally, although the latter look 
much more recent from being built on 
more compact soil. 

As I have already more than hinted, 
all these valleys along the foothills of 
the Sierra Madre Mountains may have 
held a dense population when these 
ancient people sojourned here, and if 
the physical characteristics were the 
same as at the present time it is very 
easy to account for. To the westward 
it is too mountainous for many people 
to find homes and cultivate the soil, 
while to the eastward the country is too 
barren after one passes the line of the 
lakes, or where the mountain rivers sink. 



A TOLTEC BABYLON. 65 

The Strip along the foothills, between 
the main ridge of mountains and the 
plains, is about the only place where 
an agricultural people could live in large 
numbers and thrive ; and now that the 
dreaded Apache Indian has been finally 
subdued, I think the day is not far dis- 
tant when it will be again peopled by a 
community engaged in peaceful pursuits. 
These ancients probably raised every- 
thing they needed, so that there was 
very little commerce between them, and 
not much need of roads or trails, 
although a few of them are occasionally 
made out with great distinctness. 

I have already spoken of the plainly 
marked road leading up the steep sides 
of Davis Hill. One can see this fully a 
mile away, although not able to fully 
make out its true character at that dis- 



66 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

tance ; the observer might suppose it to 
be a strip of light grass in a depression, 
until his error was corrected by a closer 
inspection. 

The fortifications on the summit, con- 
sidered from a military standpoint, were 
the most complete that could be desired. 
The hills retreated on both sides, giving 
full scope to the eye up and down the 
broad valley, every square yard of which 
was probably irrigated and cultivated. 
Without doubt the fortifications could 
safely be left unguarded in clear weather, 
when the inhabitants would probably be 
at work on their farms. A few keen- 
sighted sentinels, suitably posted, might 
give notice of a coming foe in ample 
time for the population to man the 
intrenchments before an attack could 
possibly be made by the most rapidly 



A TOLTEC BABYLON. 67 

moving enemy. This, of course, assumes 
that the able-bodied citizen of that day 
was equally an artisan or farmer and a 
soldier ; it is an assumption, however, 
that accords with our knowledge of 
many other ancient races. 

On our way back to the hacienda 
from these ruins we passed through an 
old, abandoned Mexican mining town 
called Barranca. It plainly showed its 
ancient character in the long rows of slag 
that had come from the adobe furnaces, 
some of which were still standing. 

Although many of the adobe houses 
were in excellent condition, even the old 
church being in a fair state of preserva- 
tion, there was not a soul about the 
place. The primitive methods of doing 
the work and the richness of the ore 
which had been smelted could be seen in 



68 CAFE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

any piece of slag taken from the piles. 
By cutting a little almost pure lead and 
silver were revealed, probably in the 
same proportions as they existed in the 
vein. These piles of slag would repre- 
sent a fortune, with new and improved 
machinery like that employed in the 
United States, to resmelt them, and with 
a railway running near. This place, 
moreover, is only one of the many where 
fortunes are lying dormant in the differ- 
ent slag piles of the old mines of north- 
western Chihuahua alone. 

It is difficult to get Information from 
the natives reofardino- the mineral wealth 
of the country. If they have a good mine 
they are exceedingly shy about saying so, 
and they are very jealous lest foreigners 
should obtain valuable mining property. 
They dislike to see it pass from under 



A TOLTEC BABYLON. 69 

their control, and do not take kindly to 
the foreign spirit of enterprise and 
improvement. This, however, is quite 
contrary to the policy of the Mexican 
Government, which is doing all it can to 
induce capital to come in for investment. 
The country is in a stable, settled condi- 
tion, and we found every part that we 
visited quite as safe as the more settled 
communities of the United States. The 
politeness and disposition to oblige of 
the humblest of the Mexican people you 
can rely upon invariably, and that is 
more than can be said of the cor- 
responding class in more enlightened 
countries. 

This day of our visit to the ruins of 
Davis Hill was very warm, and our 
driver, not having a taste for antiquarian 
research, even in the modest degree pos- 



7° CATf: AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

sessed by me, had quite resented being 
dragged from the shade of the great 
Cottonwood trees around the hacienda. 
To show his native independence of spirit 
he therefore refused to Hsten to advice 
and water his horses on the road, but on 
returning allowed them to drink all they 
wanted ; as a consequence one horse 
died. We left Deming with two large 
American horses, but now found it im- 
possible, even on that great hacienda, to 
obtain a suitable match, so we were 
obliged to start off with a comical, sturdy 
broncho for a mate, which not only gave 
a very lop-sided look to the conveyance, 
but an appearance of extreme cruelty 
toward the little animal. Whenever the 
bior horse trotted the little fellow would 
take up a canter to keep alongside, and 
it was almost enough to make a person 



A TOLTEC BABYLON. 71 

seasick to watch the ill-mated pair get 
over the ground. 

We were soon back again to Corralitos, 
and inside the forbidding looking gates. 
Here we were very comfortably housed, 
with a bright fire burning in the bedroom 
fireplace to take the chill off the air, as 
the rooms in these thick adobe buildings 
are much like cellars in their temperature, 
whether it is warm or cold outside. We 
had not been in many hours before other 
strangers began to arrive : Englishmen 
from their ranches, miners from the silver 
mines, a surveying party, and a number of 
cattlemen. By nightfall the place was 
swarming with people, and the problem 
was where to stow away so many for the 
night. The long table in the old adobe 
dining room was three times full. There 
is no lack of fresh meat on such an haci- 



72 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

enda, all that is necessary being to send 
out the butcher, who kills whatever is 
wanted from the abundant supply on the 
range, for in that clear, rare atmosphere 
meat is preserved until used. 

There is another feature of larg-e ha- 
ciendas like this that may prove interest- 
ing. I refer to the store, which usually 
occupies one corner of the building. At 
this store is found every kind of merchan- 
dise that is wanted, and here is doled out 
to the Indian population in exchange for 
their work certain quantities of flour or 
sugar, — you can be sure the amount is 
always very small, — and in time the simple 
people draw much more than is due them 
ior work, as they are always allowed 
credit. Then it is they become peons or 
slaves, for they rarely get out of debt, but 
increase it until they are virtually owned 



A TOLTEC BABYLON. 73 

by the lords of the soil, who can do as 
they please with the poor creatures, and 
work them whenever and wherever they 
see fit. These debts descend from father 
to son ; in this manner they are continu- 
ally increasing, and so the chains are riv- 
eted. I suppose the system has many 
advantages as well as disadvantages, but 
certainly we see the disadvantages to the 
poor and simple people, who, having their 
immediate wants supplied, do not care to 
look beyond. Among the more intelli- 
gent this condition is very galling, but as 
a rule they are shrewd enough to avoid it. 
Standing a short distance from the 
inclosing wall of the hacienda, and in the 
midst of the poor quarter, was a dilapi- 
dated Roman Catholic church. There 
was no resident priest, but one came twice 
a year from a settlement farther south. 



74 CArE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

At all hours of the clay, however, women 
could be found kneelinc: in front of the 
primitive altar, a poor, degraded class, 
with not as much morality as the most 
savage tribes who have never heard of 
civilization. 

My trip of over two hundred miles down 
the eastern slope of the Sierra Madre 
Mountains, from the boundary between 
the two countries, coupled with the infor- 
mation I gained en roidc, showed me that 
I might do better by attempting to make 
my way through the great range from the 
westward ; so it was decided to make the 
change of base from the State of Chihua- 
hua to that of Sonora. 

While visiting at La Ascension on our 
return trip we saw about a dozen Mexi- 
cans extracting silver from ore by a 
method which is as old as that mentioned 



A TO L TEC BABYLON. 75 

in the Bible. The rich ore, showing 
probably two hundred and fifty dollars 
to the ton, had been taken out of 
the vein with crowbars and by rough 
blasting, and then brought to the town on 
the backs of burros. Here the huo^e rocks 
were first crushed with sledofe hammers 
until they were about the size of one's fist 
and could be easily handled, then broken 
again with smaller hand hammers until 
almost as fine as coarse sand. This was 
reduced to a complete powder by being 
beaten in heavy leather bags. After these 
operations it was mixed with water and 
thrown into an ai^astra, a cross between a 
coffee mill and a quartz crusher ; in other 
words, consisting of four stones tied to a 
revolving mill-bar and turned by the inev- 
itable mule. This makes a paste rich in 
granulated silver, which is mixed with salt 



76 CAl'£ AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

and boiled in a little pot, as if they were 
making apple butter instead of working 
one of the richest veins of silver in a coun- 
try celebrated for its valuable silver mines. 
The resulting- mass is washed out in a 
pan, as a prospecting miner washes for 
signs of gold, with the exception that 
quicksilver is put in to form an amalgam 
with the now liberated metal. The latter 
is pressed out with the hand, and the 
little ball of amalgam, as bright as silver 
itself, has the mercury driven off by a fur- 
nace only big enough to fry the eggs 
for a party of two. The pure silver ball, 
glistening like hoar frost in the sun, is 
now beaten down to the size of a big mar- 
ble to prevent its breaking to pieces. It 
is exasperating in the extreme to see such 
ignorant methods of man applied to the 
rich offerings of nature. 



A TOLTEC BABYLON. 77 

There was but very little out of the 
usual routine of travel for a day or two, 
until we came to the third crossing of 
the Casas Grandes River, at a point so 
near its entrance into Laguna Guzman 
that we felt sure we would have no 
trouble in grettino- over. For, as I have 
already explained, most of the rivers in 
this country are larger the nearer you 
approach their heads. There had been 
no rains to swell the streams, and our 
surprise can therefore be imagined when, 
upon reaching the river, we found it a 
raging torrent. A long experience had 
taught me that it does not pay to await 
the falling of a swollen river ; so we 
set at work to get over the obstreperous 
stream. The loads were all piled on the 
seats, above the empty wagon beds, which, 
being thus weighted and top-heavy, acted 



78 CAFE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

like so many boats when they dashed 
into the river. Our driver, a Mexican, 
had the worst of it in a low, light wagon. 




CROSSING THE CASAS GRANDES RIVER. 



drawn by two small pinto bronchos. The 
flood swept him down stream under an 
overhanging clump of willows, despite a 
rope tied to the tongue of the wagon and 
another held firmly by a half dozen per- 
sons on the upstream side. But he was 
as cool at the head as at the feet, al- 
though he was knee deep in ice water at 



A TOLTEC BABYLON. 79 

the time as he stood up in the wagon bed. 
After waiting a moment to allow the 
horses to regain their bewildered senses, 
he swam them upstream to the crossing, 
and the men, with a whoop and a yell, 
drao-o-ed the whole affair on shore, look- 
ino- like drowned rats tied to a cigar box. 
We were three hours and a quarter 
getting over that river, and felt as if we 
could have drowned the man who wrote 
that Northern Mexico is a vast, waterless 
tract of country. 



CHAPTER III. 

SONORA ALONO THE SONORA RAILWAY 

HERMOSILLO — GUAYMAS, AND ITS BEAU- 
TIFUL HARBOR FISHING AND HUNTING 

ABOUT GUAYMAS. 

jnROM Deming-, N. M., it is but a five 

^ or six hours' ride by rail to Benson in 

Arizona, the initial point of the Sonora 

railway, a branch of the Atchison, To- 

peka, and Santa Fe, and extending to 

the seaport of Guaymas in Mexico. The 

ride from Benson consumes two days, 

and the route is through the mountains, 

down the lovely, fertile valleys, and 

across the flat, tropical country of the 

seacoast. It is a ride of great novelty 
80 



ALONG THE SONORA RAILWAY. 8 1 

and of surpassing beauty throughout the 
entire distance. After the train reached 
Nogalles, a town which is half in the 
United States and half in Mexico, it was 
made up in regular Mexican fashion of 
first, second, and third class coaches ; 
and, from the number of Mexicans 
aboard, it appeared they were as much 
given to travel as their more active 
neighbors of the North ; with this differ- 
ence, however : that where they can save 
a penny by going second or third class 
they do so. This fact removes an inter- 
esting feature of Mexican travel from the 
sight of the average American tourist, 
for, as a rule, he prefers comfort to the 
study of the picturesque in his fellow- 
travelers. 

When we reached Hermosillo, a place 
of about ten thousand people, the sta- 



82 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

tion was filled with vendors of oranges ; 
and such oranges I never tasted else- \ 
where, although I have sampled that j 
fruit in some of the most famous eroves \ 

of Florida and California. In sweetness, 

I 

delicious flavor, and juiciness they sur- ! 
pass all others ; in fact it is impossible : 
to find a poor or insipid one among all i 
you can buy and eat. It is a pity there j 
is so little market for this very superior I 
fruit. The entire country from Hermo- ] 
sillo down to the coast seems to be a per- \ 
feet one for orange culture, and for all i 
other semi-tropical fruits. The prices \ 
paid for oranges are very reasonable, for \ 
much more is grown than can be con- 
sumed, and there seems to be little outlet i 

i 

for the surplus in any direction. ! 

Just before reaching Guaymas the rail- 
way winds among the coast range of | 



GUAYMAS, AND ITS HARBOR. 83 

mountains, and crosses a shallow arm of 
the sea that is bridoed with a lono- trestle. 
As you pass over the bridge you can 
look across the harbor through the gaps 
in the steep mountains straight out to 
sea, or rather into the Gulf of California. 
Again you are treated to long vistas of 
the beautiful mountain-locked harbor as 
the train winds around the steep peaks 
and you approach the old seaport. Be- 
fore going to this port, the principal one 
on the Gulf of California, I made up my 
mind there would be comparatively little 
to say regarding it, as it is not only the 
terminus of a railway, but is also located 
on one or two lines of steamship travel, 
and would therefore be almost as well 
known as some California resorts or 
other famous places of the Pacific coast. 
It proved, on the contrary, to be seldom 



84 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

or never visited by tourists. I could find 
nothing about it in my numerous guide- 
books and volumes devoted to Mexico, 
but nevertheless discovered a crreat deal 
of interest in this typical old town that 
was both novel and attractive. When 
the Sonora railway first reached here 
a number of years ago everything was 
ready to be "boomed." A hotel to cost 
a quarter of a million was started on a 
beautiful knoll overlooking the pictur- 
esque harbor, but after about one-tenth 
that amount had been put into the foun- 
dation and carriage way leading up the 
hill it was given up. 

It may not be inappropriate to say 
that all of Guaymas is very much like 
the hotel — it has a fine foundation, but 
not much of anything else, although its 
sanitary conditions for a winter resort 



GUAYMAS, AND ITS HARBOR. 85 

are nowhere else excelled. The first day 
you arrive you get a sample of the 
weather in mild, warm days, with cool 
nights, that will not vary a hair's breadth 
in all your stay. The harbor is pictur- 
esque in the extreme. It is completely 
landlocked, and swarms with a hundred 
kinds of fishes. It looks not unlike the 
harbor of San Francisco, and, although 
smaller, is far more interesting in the 
many beautiful vistas it opens to sight as 
one sails over its intricate waters. If it 
should ever become a popular winter 
resort no finer fishing or sailing could be 
had than in the harbor of Guaymas and 
the Gulf of California. A constant sea 
or land breeze is blowing in summer and 
winter, but it is never strong enough to 
make the waters dangerous. I have 
been fishing several times, and certainly 



86 CA VE AND CLIFF D IVELLERS. 

the piscatorial bill of fare, as shown by 
my experience, has been an extremely 
varied one. 

While off the shore in the harbor one 
afternoon I caught a shark measuring a 
little over six feet in length, which gave 
me a tussle of about a quarter of an hour 
before I could pull it alongside and 
plunge a knife into its heart. This last 
operation, be it observed, was not so 
much to end its own sufferings as to pre- 
vent those of other and better fish, and 
maybe a human being or so, in the near 
future. The natives told me, however, 
that it was only the large spotted or 
tiger shark, a species seldom seen there, 
that will deign to mistake the leg of a 
swimmer for the early worm that is 
caught by the bird. None of the shark 
kind enter the inner harbor where a sen- 



GUAYMAS, AND ITS HARBOR. 89 

sible person would naturally bathe, as he 
wants enough water to hide his move- 
ments from his prey, and this condition 
seldom exists in the inner harbor. In- . 
deed its name, Guaymas, borrowed from 
that of an Indian tribe, means a cup of 
water ; and it is aptly applied, for the 
harbor is so landlocked and protected 
that seldom more than the slightest rip- 
ple disturbs its mirror-like surface, al- 
though breezes that will waft sailboats 
prevail throughout the day. 

As a further part of my fishing experi- 
ence we caught a number of perch-like 
fish called by the people cabrilla (mean- 
ing little goat-fish, on account of some 
fancied resemblance to that animal, so 
numerous in the settled parts of Mexico), 
and which is pronounced the sweetest 
fish known on the Pacific coast. They 



9° CAVE AND CLIFF DWFIJ.ERS. 

are not as bier as one's liand, and, of 
course, it takes a great man\- of tlicm to 
make a mess for a few persons, but once 
a mess is secured it cannot be equaled in 
all the catches known to the piscatorial 
art. Another fish tliat we secured, and 
which the natives call hoca diihc (sweet 
mouth), looked like a German carp. It 
had a pale blue head, weighed from 'two 
to four pounds, and seemed to run in 
schools, with no truants whatever to be 
found outside the school. One might 
fish a day for the boca diilcc and never 
get a bite, but on the instant one was 
caught you could haul them in over the 
side of the boat as fast as you could bait 
and drop your hook, the biting ceasing 
as suddenly as it began. They are a 
delicious fisli for eating, and should 
Guaymas ever become the large-sized 



FISHING AND HUNTING. 91 

city which its favorable position seems to 
promise, the boca dulce will furnish one 
of the leading fishes for its market. 

While we were there the United States 
Fish Commission steamer Albatross 
came into the harbor from a long cruise 
in investigating the fishes of the Gulf of 
California, and Captain Tanner of the 
United States Navy told a small party 
of us that there were enough fish in the 
Gulf of California to supply all the mar- 
kets of Mexico and the United States. 
Singularly enough, nearly all this great 
fish supply in the Gulf was along the east- 
ern coast of this American Adriatic, or 
on the Sonora and Sinaloa side, rather 
than on or along the coast of Lower Cali- 
fornia. A good system of railways to the 
interior.mining camps is needed to make 
this great supply available to the wealth 



92 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

of this naturally wealthy, but now poorly 
developed country. This will inevitably, 
come, for no one can travel in Northern 
Mexico without clearly seeing it has a 
grand and wonderful future ahead, that 
will greatly strengthen us if we are in the 
ascendant, and that can correspondingly 
hurt us in an hour of need if we are not. 
The tide is rapidly setting in our favor, if 
we take proper advantage of it. 

When I first sailed on the waters of the 
Gulf of California, some eighteen years 
ago, its commerce, although small indeed, 
was three-fourths in the hands of Euro- 
peans, while to-day three-fourths of it is 
American, and only the other fourth 
European. We labor under one disad- 
vantage, however, and that is we do not 
attempt to cater to another's taste, even 
though to do so would be money in our 



FISHING AND HUNTING. 93 

pockets. There are peculiar lines of 
cheap prints and cottons made in Europe 
that are sold only on the west coast of 
Mexico, not a yard finding its way to any 
other part of the world. Now, while our 
goods command higher prices, and a great 
deal finds a market there, it does not 
" exactly fill the bill," and Americans, 
probably from not knowing the real wants 
of these people, do not manufacture the 
needed articles, and drive foreign stuff 
from the Mexican market. The igno- 
rance of our people as to the commercial 
value of Mexico, and especially those 
parts off the principal lines of railway, is 
certainly great, and is losing us money 
now, and a more important influence 
later. Our enormous advantage of con- 
tiguity is pressing us forward in spite of 
ourselves, and we ought to sweep nearly 



94 CA VE AND CLIFF D WELLERS. 

every line of commerce in Mexico from 
the hands of foreigners — a fact that is 
most emphatically true of the northern 
part of that rich territory. 

After cooking our lunch of cabrillas and 
boca diilccs on the northern or inside shore 
of San Vincente Island we made a visit 
to the caves on the southern or seaward 
face of the same island. This led us 
through a little gorge between two high, 
beetling cliffs, into which the sea had 
excavated the caves we were to see. 
Through, or rather under, this gorge 
the waters pour into a small underground 
funnel of the solid rock before they reach 
the little lagoon beyond. At all hours 
the reverberation of the rushing tide is 
like thunder, as it beats backward and for- 
ward in its prison. The upper crust of 
the funnel is pierced with occasional holes 



FISHING AND HUNTING. 97 

and crevices, and at certain stages of 
water these are the mouths of so many 
spouting geysers, as each wave comes in 
and beats against the stone roof that con- 
fines it. Woe to the person who tries to 
cross just as a high wave reaches its max- 
imum strength in the cave beneath ! He 
will get the quickest and most effectual 
bath of his lifetime. Once on the sea- 
ward face a long line of caves is presented 
to view. 

The high hills here are hard conglom- 
erate, and the waves of the Gulf of Cali- 
fornia, as we call it (the Gulf of Cortez 
as it was first named, and is yet called by 
most Mexicans), have cut far under the 
cliffs, leaving overhanging masses of 
rock, sometimes hundreds of feet in 
depth, as measured along the roofs under 
which we walked. They looked forbid- 



98 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

ding- enough, and wc feared that a lew 
hundred tons might at any moment fall 
on our heads ; for here and there could 
be seen just such deposits in the shallow 
waters, while occasional islands were dis- 
cerned along the front of some of the 
caves which must have been formed when 
greater masses fell. But these fallings 
were without doubt centuries apart, and 
all these caves fully as safe to explore as 
caves in general. At any rate, every 
thought of danger was soon lost in the 
delicious coolness ; for the day on the 
shining water and white sand beach had 
been very warm, although we hardly 
noticed it in the excitement of our sport. 
The coloring in the largest cave was 
beautiful beyond description. The sketch 
of our artist is as good as black and 
white can make it ; but it conveys little 



FISHING AND HUNTING. 99 

idea of the reality, save form and con- 
tour. There was a narrow ledge on the 
skirts of the cave where one could find a 
way to enter, except at the highest tide 
or when a storm was beating landward, 
which is seldom the case, and never 
known duringf the winter months. 

Guaymas has a wealth of natural attrac- 
tions for the winter visitor or traveler, but 
hardly any reared by the hand of man to 
make his stay agreeable in a strictly 
physical sense. The hotels are all Mexi- 
can, and while they should be judged 
from that standpoint, probably to an 
American they would be very uncom- 
fortable. Our hotel was a curious com- 
pound of saloon, kitchen, dining room, 
and court, all in one, with sleeping rooms 
ranged alono- two sides. One end of the 
building opened on a street, and the other 



lOO CAF£ AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

directly on tlie beautiful bay, within a 
stone's throw of the water. The views 
in all directions from the water front of 
that simple hotel were indescribably 
lovely, causing one to forget the discom- 
forts of the interior and the lack of cleanly 
food. 

Even the inhabitants, in their Nazarene 
primitiveness, are very interesting. Al- 
though Guaymas claims seven thousand 
within her gates, her waterworks are of 
the same character as those of the ancient 
Egyptians. The chief description I shall 
give of them is a picture of one of the 
public wells just in the suburbs of the 
town. The water from these wells is 
used only for sprinkling the streets, and 
for household purposes, such as washing, 
it being totally unfit for drinking. That 
precious fluid is brought from a spring 



;^==^ 




FISHING AND HUNTING. 103 

fully seven miles back in the mountains. 
We were told that this water could be 
easily piped into the town, and that there 
was some talk of an attempt to do so, for 
the sleepy old place is beginning to 
awaken to the fact that the world is mov- 
ing ahead. 

Near the town is a sort of pleasure gar- 
den, or ranch, as it is sometimes called. 
It is owned by an industrious German, 
who sank a number of wells on the place, 
and obtained warm, cold, and mineral 
waters, and established baths, which are 
very popular with the people and make 
the place quite a resort. There are 
groves of all kinds of tropical fruits and 
plants, with flowers in the greatest pro- 
fusion ; the brilliant, gorgeous flowers of 
the tropics growing beside the more 
modest ones of the temperate zone, and 



I04 CAVE AND CUFF DWELLERS. 

making- the arid, rocky region beautiful 
with blossoms and shade. During tlie 
rainy season this country is the home of 
the tarantula, the centipede, and the scor- 
pion, for they flourish equally as well as 
the flowers. 

In one of the rooms of the American 
Consulate, facing- the principal plaza, is 
lodged a piece of a shell, thrown there, 
singularly enough, by an American man- 
of-war when Guaymas was taken in 1847, 
during the Mexican War. At that time 
the Po7'-tsmG7ith and the Conorcss entered 
the harbor, shelled the town, and took it. 
The piece of shell referred to lodged in 
the huq-e wooden rafters of the buildincr 
and as these are never covered in the 
simple architecture of that country its 
rusty, round side is plainly visible from 
beneath. From the positions assigned to 



FISHING AND HUNTING. 105 

the vessels it is said to have been the 
Congress, she of Monitor-Merrhnac fame 
afterward ; and as the American flag still 
floats from the staff directly over the 
shell it is quite an interesting and historic 
piece of iron. Very few Americans, 
however, associate the quiet little town 
of Guaymas with any event of the war 
waged so long ago that its memories are 
almost lost in the later and greater war 
of civil strife. 

In the good old times Guaymas used 
to have revolutions of its own. When- 
ever a governor of the place was finan- 
cially embarrassed, or imagined he would 
soon be replaced by some fresh favorite 
from the City of Mexico, he would issue 
a proclamation and send around to mer- 
chant after merchant to take up a collec- 
tion. If they had the temerity to object, 



io6 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

not wishing- to part with their worldly 
goods in that fashion, one of their num- 
ber was selected as an example, taken 
out and shot, which had the desired 
effect of causing the others to come to 
time. We had the pleasure of meeting 
one of the old-time governors who had 
ruled in this fashion. He now holds an 
important position, is a man of great 
wealth, and a distinguished citizen — a 
tall, fine-looking man — but I could not 
help thinking he looked the born pirate, 
and would enjoy playing the despot again 
if he had the opportunity. 

The great mass of the working class of 
this western part of Mexico are the Yaqui 
and Mayo Indians, portions of these 
tribes being civilized, and others adhering 
to their wild and nomadic life In the 
mountains. They are one of the most 



FISHING AND HUNTING. 107 

interesting- features of the country. For 
years savage members of the Yaqui tribe 
have waged bloody and successful wars 
against the Mexican Government, and 
have been the principal cause of the slow 
development of the Gulf coast ; but since 
the death of their famous leader Cajeme 
they have been peaceable and quiet. As 
a race they are remarkably stalwart, hand- 
some, and aggressive, and are said to be 
able to endure any extremes of heat or 
cold. They are enlisted in the service of 
the government whenever it is possible, 
and make the best soldiers obtainable for 
this particular country. 

While in Guaymas I heard from reli- 
able sources that the jabali, peccary, or 
Mexican wild hog, was quite plentiful 
along the line of the Sonora Railway, 
and determined to get up a small party 



lo8 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

and attack these pugnacious pigs in their 
own haunts. The jabali (pronounced 
hah-va-lee in the Mexican version of the 
Spanish language) is the wild hog of 
Northern Mexico, and while one of them 
is in no wise equal to the wild boar of 
other countries, still, as they go in droves, 
and are equal in courage, they more than 
make up in numbers all they lose by 
being considered individually. Up to 
this time my game list had included polar 
bears, chipmunks, moose, jack rabbits, 
grizzlies, snipe, elk, buffalo, snow birds, 
reindeer, vultures, panther, and others, 
but as yet the scalp of no peccary dangled 
from my belt. So one fine morning we 
pulled out for Torres station, about 
twenty or twenty-five miles up the railway, 
where peccaries could be expected, and 
where horses (better speaking, the buck' 



FISHING AND HUNTING. 109 

ing broncho of the Southwest) could be 
procured, together with guides, ropers-in, 
etc. 

The fertile soil and warm sunshine of 
Sonora quickens the imagination in away 
unknown in the northern part of the 
United States, with its colder clime and 
cloudy skies. The day before starting I 
had done a good deal of telegraphing up 
the Sonora railway to learn just where 
these peccaries might be the most numer- 
ous, and the replies were enthusiastic as 
well as comical. Carbo sent back word 
that the section men on the railway had 
to "shoo" t\\Q jabalis off the track so as 
to repair it ; another station reported that 
wild hogs were seen every day except 
Sundays ; another station said there was 
a Yaqui Indian guide there who went out 
with a lasso and a long, sharpened stick, 



I 

no CAVE AXD a. IFF DWELLERS. \ 

and brought in a peccary every morning j 

before breakfast ; while Torres thought 1 j 

could have jahali about three miles from 1 

■ i 

there. This was the most modest report | 

and the nearest station, so I decided on 

Torres. 

The country along the southern por- j 

tion of the Sonora railway would be : 

interesting in the extreme to one un- i 

familiar with tropical or sub-tropical ; 

countries. Its vegetation was most I 

curious, and the surrounding country j 

picturesque. Fine scenery can, indeed, j 

be viewed in a thousand places in our , 

own country, but it is not characterized | 

with such a wonderful plant growth as i 

we saw that morning on our way to the ■ 

slaughter grounds of the peccaries. Here 

was the universal mesquite, looking like ; 

a dwarfed apple tree, and that affords the I 



FISHING AND HUNTING. Hi 

brightest fire of any wood ever burned. 
The tender of our engine was filled with 
it, and, as far as fuel was concerned, 
we could have made sixty miles an hour, 
had we wished to do so. The wood of 
the mesquite is of a beautiful bright 
cherry red ; many a time I have won- 
dered if this plentiful, tough, and twisted 
timber of the far Southwest could not be 
utilized in some way as a fancy wood ; 
certainly a more beautiful color was never 
seen. Occasionally I thought I saw my 
old friend the sagebrush ; then there was 
the ironwood {^palo de hierro), that looks 
like a very fine variety of the mesquite. 
Its name is derived from its hardness, and 
is well deserved. It requires an ax to 
fell each tree, and as the quality of differ- 
ent trees is always the same, and that of 
different axes is not, even this ratio of 



112 CAVE A AW CLIFF DWELLERS. 

one ax to one tree has to be changed 

occasionally, and always in favor of the 

tree. There was a story going the rounds 

that a tramp, who had wandered into 

I 
that country (tramps sometimes get lost j 

and find themselves in Sonora just once), , 

with the usual appetite of his class ap- j 

plied for something to eat. In reply he ' 

was told, if he would g-et out a certain I 

number of rails for a fence, the proprietor j 

would give him a week's board. It was, \ 

as he thought, about a day's work that ] 

had been assigned him, and bright and 

early next morning he sallied out with his ' 

ax on his shoulder. Unfortunately the i 

most tempting tree he met was an iron- j 

wood. Very late in the evening he re- j 

turned with the ax helve on his arm. i 

" How many rails did you split to-day?" j 

was asked. " I did not split any, but 



FISHING AND HUNTING. 113 

I hewed out one," was the reply ; and 
then he resigned his position. 

There is also the/^/<9 vercie, named for 
its color, with its bright, vivid green leaf, 
twig, and bark, and its pretty yellow blos- 
soms, making a beautiful contrast with 
the more somber green of other trees. 
Occasionally great rows of cottonwoods 
(the alamo of the Mexicans) show the 
line of water courses, while a number of 
shrubs covered with blossoms are seen, 
apparently half tree, half cactus, so thick 
are their brambles and thorns. But as 
to cactus ! There are five hundred spe- 
cies in America, of which Mexico has 
a large plurality, and the majority of 
these can be found along this end of the 
Sonora railway. There is the giant pita- 
haya, sometimes with a dozen arms, each 
as big as an ordinary tree, and from thirty 



114 CAVE AND CI. IFF DWELLERS. 

to forty feet in height. Each arm has 
a score of pulpy ribs along' its sides, and i 
each rib has a button of thorns every inch j 
along its length, each button having I 
twenty or twenty-four great thorns stick- I 
ing from it. I was told that when a ; 
hunter is sorely pressed by peccaries, if 
he will climb a pitahaya about ten feet, , 
the thorns are so thick and terrible in j 
their effect that the peccaries will not ; 
dare to follow him, hardy and venture- I 
some as they are. Then there is the | 
choya or cholla cactus, about as high as ] 
one's waist. You can go around a pita- 
haya as you would a tree, but when you | 
find a field of chopalla (field of choyas) ; 
you might as well try to go around the 
atmosphere to get to a given point, j 
The cholla will lean over until it breaks : 
its back trying to get in your way. so that \ 




mm 




A PITAHAYA CACTUS. 



FISHING AND HUNTING. 117 

it can dart a dozen or two spines into your 
flesh. Tliey are the worst of all ; I could 
use almost as much of my readers' time 
in describing different cactuses as I used of 
my own in picking them out of my flesh 
after the peccary hunt was over, but I 
forbear. 

When we reached Torres nobody 
seemed to know anything about pec- 
caries, and as the train stopped there for 
dinner we had plenty of time to talk it 
over. It then appeared that wild hoo-s 
were to be found all the way from Guay- 
mas to Nogalles, but at this time of the 
year were very scarce, and seen only in 
twos or threes, and not in droves. In 
droves they are pugnacious and will 
easily bay; but in pairs or very small 
numbers they are more timid, and not 
until they are exhausted or overtaken by 



Ii8 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. \ 

a swifter pursuer will they show fight, i 

No j'ada/is could be depended on, and, as i 

I had only a day or two to spare, I j 
determined to move on to Carbo, where 

the prospects seemed better, and which j 

place we reached in time for supper. | 

This over we busied ourselves about our I 

horses, mules, guides, dogs, etc. The ; 

superintendent of the railway at Guaymas | 

had kindly volunteered to telegraph to . 

any point and secure us a Yaqui Indian ! 

or two to guide us after the j'ada/z's, and ' 

any number of hundreds of dogs to bay ; 

them if needed. He said he could j 

guarantee the dogs (and so could any- j 
one else who knew anything about a 
Mexican village), but he felt dubious 

about the Yaqui Indians. We secured j 

four broncho horses and two dejected j 

mules for the next day, and then went to i 



FISHIhTG AND HUNTING. 1 19 

sleep. I unrolled my blankets and 
buffalo robe, laid them down on the rail- 
way station platform, and, as the night 
was cold, had a fine sleep. The morn- 
ing broke as clear as crystal, and we were 
up bright and early ; but in spite of all our 
Caucasian hurry we did not get away until 
shortly after nine o'clock. Our first desti- 
nation was a ranch two miles to the south- 
east of the town, owned by Colonel Munoz. 
Here we were to get a Yaqui Indian for 
a guide, and learn the latest quotations 
as to the peccary market. Shortly after 
rising in the morning heavy clouds were 
seen in the northeast, which kept spread- 
ing and coming nearer and nearer, with 
vivid flashes of lightning and loud rum- 
blings of thunder, until just about the 
time we were halfway to the ranch of 
Colonel Munoz it broke over us with the 



I20 CAVE A AW CLIFF DWELLERS. 

full fury of a Sonora thunderstorm. Its 
worst feature was its persistency. I 
never saw a tluinderstorni hang on for 
six or seven hours before in all my life, 
but this did, much to our personal dis- 
comfort, and, worst of all, to the serious 
detriment of the hunt. 

Arriving- at the ranch, we found that 
the Yaqui Indian guide, who, by the way, 
was a famous peccary hunter, was absent, 
working on a distant part of the hacienda. 
Now a hacienda or ranch in Sonora is 
about as large as a county in most of our 
States, and it requires efficient messenger 
service to get over one inside of half a 
day. We sent for him, however, and as a 
small boy present volunteered the infor- 
mation that he thought he could guide 
the party to where a pig might be lurk- 
ing in the brush, we concluded we would 



FISHING AND HUNTING. 121 

take a short spin with him while waiting 
for the Yaqui Indian. He based his 
expectation of a jabali on the rain that 
had been falling, which sent the wild hogs 




A MEXICAN JABALI. 



out, made it easy to trail them, and 
brought them to bay sooner than if the 
weather had been dry. There was no 
horse for the youngster to ride, so he was 
taken on behind one of the party, and we 
started out in the pelting rain after " the 
poor little pigs," as one of the sefioras of 



122 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

the hacienda put it. As the poor little 

i 

pigs have been known to keep a man up \ 
a tree for three clays, we felt more like I 
wasting ammunition than sympathy on ; 
them. 

The rain now came down in torrents, ; 
vivid sheets of lightning played in our ) 
faces, and the rumbling of the thunder i 
was often so loud we could not hear the j 
shoutinofs of one another. Now, indeed, 
we were anxious to get a peccary ; for ' 
while a little rain helps the hunter in his i 
chase after wild hogs, such a deluge is ] 
entirely against him. The dry gullies \ 
were running water that would swim a ; 
peccary, and this was in their favor in | 
escaping from the dogs, for I should have • 
said we had two dos^s with us : one a 
noble-looking fellow for a hunt, and i 
resembling a Cuban bloodhound, the | 



FISHING AND HUNTING. 123 

Other a most dejected-looking whelp, a 
cross between a mongrel and a cur. The 
whole affair was the sloppiest, wettest 
failure, and about noon we got back to 
the hacienda, looking like drowned rats. 
A good Mexican dinner of chili con 
carne, red peppers, tabasco, and a few 
other warm condiments was never better 
appreciated, and as the Yaqui Indian 
had put in an appearance we crawled 
back into our wet saddles, with our 
clothes sticking to us like postage stamps, 
and once more sallied out. While we 
were eating- dinner the rain had ceased, 
and our otherwise dampened hopes had 
gone up in consequence ; but when we 
were about a mile away it seemed as if 
the very floodgates of heaven had opened 
and let all the water down the back of 
our necks. Gullies we had crossed in 



124 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. j 

coming- out almost dry now ran noisy, ; 

muddy waters up to tlie horses' middle, j 

and in some places halfway up their sides. ] 

Thus we kept along for an hour or so, \ 

wet to the skin, and even under the skin, i 
cholla cactus burs sticking to us until we 

looked like sheep. About two o'clock ; 
we heard loud shouts, and away we tore 

through cactus spines and shrubby thorns, ; 
for it was a sign there were peccaries 

ahead. Indeed they were ahead, and we j 
chased them for eight miles. The ground 

was slippery, and the unshod ponies went j 
sliding around over it like cats on ice 

with clam shells tied to their feet. I | 
weighed 265 pounds, and my small pony 

not over two or three times as much, and ' 

how he kept up with the others, swing- i 

ing through choyallas and around thick " 

mesquite brush is yet a mystery, j 



FISHING AND HUNTING. 125 

Occasionally a horse would get a bunch 
of cactus in his fetlock joint, and then he 
would turn up his heels to let the light- 




CHASING THE JABALIS IN THE RAIN. 

ning pick it out, regardless of his rider. 
Once or twice the peccaries were sighted 
as two faint gray streaks, just outlined 
against the dark green brush, into which 
they disappeared at once. Several times 
it looked as if we ought to overtake them 
in a minue or two, but that minute never 
came. Our Yaqui guide was valiantly to 
the front, making leaps over cactuses that 



126 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. \ 

would have shamed a kangaroo, and keep- j 

ing well ahead of the horses. Suddenly j 

he stopped and gave up the chase on the ' 

near side of a broad river, the result of I 

the rain. His face was melancholy in I 

the extreme, and it was known he would | 

not give up the chase without the best of ! 

reasons, as he was to receive a month's j 

wages (five dollars) if a jabali were i 

killed. He explained in Spanish that the j 

I 
party had been following the hogs with an : 

absolute certainty of catching them, so | 
tired had they become, when, to his j 
dismay, the tracks of three other fresh i 
peccaries were seen coming in at this | 
point. Whenever {x&^\jabalis join those 
worn out enough to come to bay, the 
latter change their minds as to fighting, 
and will run as long as their fresh com- 
panions hold out. We thus would have 



FISHING AND HUNTING. 127 

had another eight to twelve miles' chase 
through the slippery mud, which the 
horses and mules could not have endured, 
so exhausted were they already. We had 
seen the beasts, nevertheless, and in los- 
ing them had learned one of their dis- 
tinct peculiarities, which fact was suffi- 
cient compensation for our first, but 
never to be forgotten, hunt for wild 
pigs. 

The peccary, as already stated, is a 
ferocious little beast, never hesitating, 
when in numbers, to attack other animals. 
The coyote leaves them alone if numer- 
ous, and even the mountain lion passes 
them to look for other o^ame. Their 
tusks are deadly weapons, and they click 
like so many hammers when the creature 
is angry. If any ambitious Nimrod wants 
a hunt after the most peculiar game extant 



128 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. \ 

in the United States and Mexico he \ 
ought to take a peccary chase in Central \ 
Sonora. j 

The country around Guaymas is ex- 
tremely fertile, and in no part of the 
American continent is there a richer i 
country than lies along the eastern and j 
northern portion of the Gulf of Cali- , 
fornia. Sonora and Sinaloa are con- i 
ceded to be the richest States in Mex- ■ 
ico, and just as Mexico has been the ; 
most backward country of North Amer- ; 
ica, so these two States are the least ad- j 
vanced portion of Mexico. This condi- ! 
tion of affairs is due almost wholly to the ; 
same cause that has retarded the growth | 
of Arizona and New Mexico, namely, the ! 
raids of hostile Indian tribes. These two | 
States have not only been a favorite j 
hunting and scalping ground for the • 



FISHING AND HUNTING. 129 

Apaches, but within their own borders 
have been superior and warlike races to 
contend with in the Yaqui and Mayo 
Indians. The last war of the Yaquis 
with the Mexican Government lasted over 
twelve years, but since its close a num- 
ber of years ago the Indians are settling 
in the towns and villages, where they are 
the most industrious portion of the work- 
ing population. With the disappearance 
of this disturbing element the most im- 
portant problem regarding the growth 
and development of the garden of the 
Pacific appears to have been solved. 
Every grade of climate can be found 
here, from the tropical seacoast to the 
temperate great plateaus, a short distance 
inland. The country has a rich, well- 
watered soil ; there are vast, well-wooded 
mountain ranges, .where all kinds of game 



I30 



CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 



are found in abundance; the rivers and] 
bays are filled with every variety of fish, 
and two or more crops of fruits or staple' 
articles can be raised yearly. Such a ; 
country cannot long remain unnoticed ' 
and unsettled; for when railways are i 
constructed through it the attention of 
outsiders must be drawn to the land. ^ 




CHAPTER IV. 

CENTRAL CHIHUAHUA FROM THE CITY OF 

CHIHUAHUA WESTWARD TO THE GREAT 
MEXICAN MINING BELT. 

TT7HILE in Guaymas and discussing 
' "^ a practicable route into the heart of 
the Sierra Madres, I was told by the 
general commanding the division in which 
Guaymas was situated, and strongly ad- 
vised by others having a knowledge of the 
country, not to attempt an entrance into 
the mountains from the western side, but 
rather from the high plateaus, of which 
the city of Chihuahua was the central 

point. There were many excellent reasons 
131 



132 CAf£ AND CLIFF DWELLERS. ' 

given for this advice. The Yaqui Indians 
were said to be very restless at that time ; \ 
the season of the year was unfavorable, 
because all large rivers, like the Yaqui, ] 
Fuerte, and Mayo, were at their height ; 
again, there were no good points near the | 
mountains for outfitting such as the city ! 

of Chihuahua afforded. All these rea- ; 

I 
sons, tooether with the advance of ex- 1 

I 
ceedingly warm weather, made me con- 
clude to retrace my steps to the eastern side 1 
of the Sierra Madre range. So we again \ 
passed over the Sonora railway, and en- j 
joyed those charming contrasts of the sea ; 
of flower-covered plains and mountains j 
during the two days' ride that took us to 
Benson. Thence we returned to Deming, 
and from that point to El Paso, whence ; 
the Mexican Central Railway takes one | 
in a night's ride about two hundred and i 



CENTRAL CHIHUAHUA. 1 33 

fifty miles southward, to the city of 
Chihuahua. 

This is a place of about thirty thousand 
people, and is the most important city 
in Northern Mexico. Like all towns in 
Mexico, but little of it can be seen from 
the railway, only the tall spires of its fa- 
mous cathedral being visible ; but the fine 
church alone well repays the tourist for 
stopping over on his southern flight. 
Beside the cathedral, there are many 
other features of interest to the tourist 
having sufficient leisure, and the town 
should not be so universally slighted as 
It now is. It is the outfitting point for 
all parties visiting the many large and fa- 
mous mines of the northern portion of the 
Sierra Madre range. The journey from 
the city to the mines is made by diligence 
for the first hundred miles, to the low- 



134 C.IJ'E AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

lying- foothills of the mountains, and then 
by mule-back for one hundred or one 
hundred and fifty miles, to the heart of 
the great range. As this was nearly the 
route we wished to pursue, the first two 
days were passed in outfitting and making 
necessary arrangements. When we were i 
informed that the diligence left Chihuahua | 
at three o'clock in the morning, we were 
convinced that the Mexicans were by no \ 
means as indolent as they have been : 
reported, especially in the matter of early | 
risinc, or they would not start out a stage 
at such an early hour. The conveyance 
must of necessity be seldom patronized 
by any persons except the natives ; and : 
the calling of passengers at that time for , 
a seventy-five or eighty mile drive could j 
only be accounted for by a morbid desire j 
of the people to be up before the early ; 



CENTRAL CHIHUAHUA. 135 

bird. The day before leaving was passed 
in assorting- all the baggage absolutely 
needed for a long trip by mule-back, and 
in getting together such necessary pro- 
visions as we would use. 

I had been told that but little could be 
purchased after leaving the town, and 
then only at three or four times the 
expense of buying and transporting the 
same from Chihuahua. So despite all 
our efforts to cut down our luggage it 
had quite a formidable appearance, and 
I judged that ni)- pack train would be an 
imposing affair, even if the daily bill of 
fare was not. Our traps were piled up 
in the ofhce of the diligence, and. orders 
were given to call us quite early, that we 
might be promptly on hand, for Ave were 
assured the diligence would wait for no 
man. Quite reluctantly I retired earl}-, 



136 C^FE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

and left the pleasant crowd sitting on the 
piazza that surrounded the inner court of 
the hotel. As the noises of one of these 
primitive Mexican hotels cease about one 
o'clock in the morning, and begin about 
two, and as the night watchman felt it 
incumbent to open my door every tour 
he made, and hold his lantern in my face 
to see whether I was having a good 
night's rest, there was little cause for 
alarm lest I should be left. Neverthe- 
less to make assurance trebly sure I was 
called by three different persons. It was 
evidently a great event to have passen- 
gers leave by the diligence. We were 
soon out in the streets, picking our way 
along in total darkness, trying to make 
the requisite number of twists and turns 
down the little side streets to the office 
(for this Mexican diligence was a proud 



CENTRAL CHIHUAHUA. 137 

affair, and would not stoop to drive to 
the hotel for passengers, not even for 
extra money). The rigid rules of the 
corporation had to be enforced, and 
were above all price ; so we went floun- 
dering around in utter darkness until we 
were waylaid by a friendly policeman 
with a lantern, who doubled us back on 
our tracks, and assisted us to reach the 
dark door of the diligence office, which, 
at that hour, was not distinguishable from 
any other door. At first we were sure 
the policeman had made a mistake, for 
there was no sign of life about the place, 
and it was full time for departure. 

Soon, however, a frowzy-headed man 
with a candle in his hand opened the 
door and bade us enter ; but I preferred 
walking up and down outside in the cool 
morning air, and had a good half hour's 



138 CATE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

exercise of that kind before the coach 
came lumbering into sight. The huge, 
old-fashioned affair had the queerest look 
imaginable ; for, hitched to it in groups 
of four each, with two leaders, were the 
tiniest mules I had ever seen. With the 
arrival of the coach and ten the office at 
once burst into life. I stood and counted 
my luggage as piece after piece was 
thrown on behind, and felt as though I 
was monopolizing the highway, for my 
freight towered up and filled the boot. 
The office was then examined to see that 
nothing had been left ; but, alas ! that 
precaution was a failure, as I found to 
my vexation at the end of the first day's 
drive. It was broad da}]ight when we 
finally got away at half-past five in the 
morning. Walking about in the cool 
air had given us voracious appetites, and 



CENTRAL CHIHUAHUA. 139 

as we clattered by the humble huts of 
the peons and saw them making their 
simple morning meals, we regretted 
exceedingly having placed any faith in 
the punctuality of this particular diligence. 
As we drove onward throuo-h the broad 
avenue of alamos on the outskirts of the 
town the fields were filled with the early 
workmen, who rise as soon as it is light 
for their work, and rest in the heat of 
noonday. In this part of the country 
these laborers are always dressed in 
white that looks immaculate in the dis- 
tance, against the dark background of the 
fields, but it will not bear close inspec- 
tion. I was thus able to prove another 
virtue of the Mexican people, or at least 
a certain portion of them, and this too 
despite the fact that my discovery does 
not accord with the generally accepted 



14° CAF£ AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

American opinion of Mexican laborers. 
There was no doubt that they were unusu- 
ally early risers to their work, as all that 
mornino- I found evidence of this fact. 
We drove twenty miles before breakfast, 
and passed people going into the city 
who had come as great a distance. As I 
have said, these same people take their 
siesta in the afternoon, and are judged 
accordingly by others who do not get up 
early enough to know what they have done. 
Leavino- Chihuahua and bearing- west 
toward the Sierra Madres, one finds the 
road even crowded with Mexican trans- 
portation, all from the rich silver belt 
now being rapidly developed, chiefly by 
American wealth. There are great carts 
with solid wooden wheels of the 
Nazarene style, the patient donkey of 
the same period, and all so numerous 



CHIHUAHUA WESTWARD. 141 

that one would think there was an exodus 
from a city soon to be put under siege. 
Almost anything that grows about the 
home of a Mexican of the lower order 
furnishes an excuse for him to take it 
into town with a hope of selling it. 
Until we were fairly out of the suburbs 
our party were the only occupants of the 
coach, but there we were joined by a 
Mexican gentleman, the son of a wealthy 
mine owner, who lived back in the 
mountains. He was on his way to 
his father's mining district, and, as I 
had met him and talked with him 
before leaving, I had so timed my de- 
parture as to be with him for at least 
a part of the joLumey. The country 
directly back of Chihuahua reminded 
me greatly of our own plains by the 
imperceptible manner in which it rises 



142 CAFE AND CI. IF I-' DWELLERS. 

toward the foothills of the mountains, 
although it was far more fertile and 
well watered, as the numbers of rich 
ranches along the way testified. At 
nine o'clock we stopped to eat breakfast 
and change mules. Our morning meal 
consisted of a concoction dignified by the 
name of coffee, with tortillas (the peo- 
ple's bread — pancakes of coarsely ground 
corn and water) and some stale eggs 
served in battered tin dishes upon a 
rouorh wooden box. The stag^e station 
being the only house in that part of the 
coimtry, we could not be choosers. I 
noticed, however, that the soil was of the 
richest kind and well watered, so that 
anything could have been raised. What 
a paradise could be made by energy and 
industry where nature has already done 
so much. 



CHIHUAHUA WESTWARD. I43 

At noon we stopped at one of the 
numerous simple and dreary little vil- 
lages with which the country is studded. 
They appear far more desolate than the 
open, bare mesa lands. All are much 
alike, each having one or two streets of 
adobe houses, and a church of forbidding 
aspect, which fronts on a still more unin- 
viting looking plaza, about fifty or seventy- 
five feet square, and set with whitewashed 
adobe benches, a stripe of green about 
the latter being almost the only thing to 
remind one of the color of verdure. The 
plaza is the pleasure ground of the people, 
and a more cheerless-looking place one 
could not imagine. ^ 

In investigating some of the resources 
of this country I ran across a (to me) new 
and interesting way of measuring wheat, 
and other products of the soil. I found 



144 CAFE AND CUFF DWELLERS. 

an old hunter on the Yukon River of 

Alaska who measured the length of 

grizzly bears by the fathom ; I have had 

a Mexican charge me for a saddle by the 

pound, carefully weighing it and esti- i 

mating the resulting cost ; and when I ' 

tried to find how much an exceptionally < 

fine field of wheat yielded to the acre, the '\ 

reply was equally surprising. The owner, j 

I 
as he boasted of the field, knew nothing j 

of so many bushels to the acre (or to the ; 

hectare, which is their usual standard of I 

measurement), nor even of any ratio of ' 

pounds or kilograms to a known area; i 

but he loudly bragged that he raised one j 

hundred for one, while only a few of his 

neighbors could claim as high as fifty for | 

one, forty for one being the average for the j 

whole valley. Now one hundred for one j 

meant that he got one hundred grains for '■ 



CHIHUAHUA WESTWARD. I45 

every grain he planted, one hundred bush- 
els for every bushel put in as seed. If he 
had planted a bushel on an acre of ground 
and got one hundred bushels in return it 
would be considered an enormous yield, 
and even a Western farmer would dance 
with delight at such a result ; but if he 
had planted a bushel on ten acres of 
ground, and got the same hundred bush- 
els as before, the Mexican farmer would 
be as happy as ever, while the American 
farmer would begin to wonder if the old 
farm could stand a third mortgage or 
not. 

Of course the American will say that 
about a certain number of bushels are 
sown to the acre, and that one hundred 
for one or fifty for one really gives us a 
fair ratio in judging of the fertility of the 
land. But I would answer that in Mexico 



146 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. ' 

little attention is paid even to sicck a ! 
ratio, or to any other in agriculture, and | 
only the most careful observation or in- 
quiry can elicit the facts necessary for a j 
basis of proper conjecture. 

A Mexican diligence is ornamented i 
with an assistant to the driver in the I 
shape of a nimble young- fellow, whose ; 
business it is to throw stones at the mules, j 
He occupies the front seat alongside the 
driver, and whenever the mules have the I 
appearance of commencing to walk — 
which occurs about every half minute — 
he jumps nimbly to the ground, makes a i 
dash ahead for the leaders, with his hand-s 1 
and pockets full of stones, and pelts the 
unfortunate beasts well. Of course they 
make a tremendous burst of speed, and 
he grasps the straps on the side of the j 
coach and swings himself on top ; then ' 



CHIHUA H UA WES T WA RD. 1 4 7 

the leaders look around, and, seeing him 
up out of the way, they slacken down 
their pace again, when the performance is 
repeated. Sometimes the mules do not 
wait to be pelted, but when they see their 
enemy stoop down to gather the missiles 
they gallop wildly ahead, leaving the 
road runner to make the best time he can 
to catch up ; which having done, he takes 
his revenge on the mules from above at 
his leisure. 

If there is one thing in which the 
Mexicans can outdo us more than another 
it is in stage or diligence driving, 
and this too with animals that will not 
compare with ours in size or strength, 
although, in proportion to their size, prob- 
ably more enduring. They generally 
make up in numbers what they lack in 
strength, for they hitch them in troops 



148 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

and droves, so to speak. When we first 
started we had two groups of four and 
two leaders ; then we changed to four 
abreast and two wheelers ; then, as the 
country grew a little rougher, they hitched 
two leaders to the six, making eight alto- 
gether. Now, again, we dropped to six 
mules in pairs, as we see them at home. 
As the last stretch was a tough one, we 
again had ten mules in sets of fours with 
two wheelers. This over a very rough 
mountain road. Here was versatility in 
mule driving that I never expected to see 
among a people that are g^enerally re- 
ported by most American writers to be of 
a decidedly non-versatile character. 

When the Mexican mules are through 
staging they " skirmish " for a living, 
grazing off such grass as can be had, or 
in lieu thereof browsino- on cottonwood 



CHIHUAHUA WESTWARD. 149 

and willow bush, not even disdaining a 
corner of a corral or a waofon tonorue or 
two if times are going a little hard with 
them. Late in the afternoon we realized 
that we were entering the foothills of the 
mountains, for the road wound through 
many picturesque little ravines and 
ascended the rocky beds of the small 
creeks, often takingf to the middle of the 
stream when the canon was very narrow 
or thickly strewn with bowlders. It was 
quite a common occurrence for the stage 
to be overturned on the road — if road 
it could be called — and the most decided 
talent in mule driving was necessary to 
guide the groups of little animals safely 
between the mossy rocks. Toward even- 
ing the walls of the long canon, with its 
broken craigs and fantastic turrets, almost 
met overhead, so narrow- was it ; but 



150 aiF/-: AND CUFF DWELLERS. 

after a few turns and twists it widened, 
and aft(;r roundino" the peak of a high 
mountain, entered another canon, where, 
strunor out its whole length, was the town 
of Cusihuiriachic. I do not intend to 
throw the name of this Mexican town 
at my readers without giving a plan, 
section, and elevation of it as a key- 
to the riddle. We were now in the 
land of the Tarahumari Indians of West 
Central Chihuahua, this long-winded name 
applying to them just as equivalent In- 
dian names are found in Maine and a few 
other places in the Union. This large 
Indian tribe, probably numbering from 
15,000 to 18,000 (the most authentic es- 
timate I can get places them at 16,000, 
although I have heard them estimated at 
30,000 in strength), was once scattered 
over a considerable territory, and their 



CHIHUAHUA WESTWARD. 153 

names are still given to most of the places 
in the country they occupied before the 
advent of Europeans. 

Wherever there is water (so I was 
told by an old resident among these 
strange and little known people, Don 
Enrique Muller) the name of the camp 
or town alongside ended in chic, as 
in the example I have given above, as 
also in Bibichic, Carichic, Baquiriachic, 
and a few others I could mention — "all 
wool and a yard wide." The rest of the 
word Cusihuiriachic, still long enough for 
five or six more names, means, says my 
authority, "the place of the standing 
post." When they ruled their own coun- 
try many years ago the principal means 
of punishment employed was the upright 
post, to which the offenders were tied and 
treated to a Delaware dissertation. Such 



154 C.4F£ AXn CLIFF DWELLERS. 

is the origin of tlic hiy name of the httle 
Mexican town of Cusiluiiriachic, situated 
about halfway bet\veen tlic cit)- of Chi- 
huahua and the o^reat mining" l>elt of the 
Sierra Madres, west and southwest of the 
city, and to w'hich it is a secondary dis- 
tributing point. The diHgence ride is 
made to it in one day, a Httle over seventy- 
five miles. The place claims five thousand 
people, and there is but one street up the 
narrow o-ulch, which, how^ever, is long" 
enough to justify its name. It is wdiolly a 
mining town, and has some important 
quartz mills strung out along the little 
stream through its principal and only 
street. When we reached our destination 
for the night we found a square adobe 
inclosure, w^th an enormous gateway, 
through which the stage rattled and then 
stopped in a small court for us to dis- 



CHIHUAHUA WESTWARD. 155 

mount. From there we passed through 
another large gate into a similar court, 
filled with a variegated assortment of 
mules, and after dodging among them, to 
cross to the opposite side, we climbed 
three or four steps, and entered the most 
primitive hotel any civilized man's eyes 
ever rested on. 

The patio or interior plaza of the 
hotel was, upon our arrival, being used as 
a cockpit, and one or two hundred people 
were jammed therein. Beside the Mexi- 
cans, there was one immense, brawny 
Chinaman. In the middle of the pit lay 
two dead cocks ; one belonged to the 
Chinaman, and the other to some member 
of the Mexican aristocracy of the town. 
An adverse decision had just been given 
regarding the victory of the Chinaman's 
cock, and he was in the act of rolling up 



156 CAVE AXD CLIFF DWELLERS. 

his sleeves to pitch into the crowd and 
vindicate the prowess of his fowl ; for- 
tunately our timely arrival prevented any 
further strife by diverting attention to us, 
while the host was draoxred from the midst 
of the fray to hunt up a key to unlock 
one of the narrow pens — called rooms — 
that overlooked the mule corral. Here, 
on a dirty brick floor, my bedding was 
spread, and I slept to a chorus of squeal- 
ing mules, which came in through the 
grated, wooden-shuttered window. And 
right here I may say that I know of no 
better opening for Americans of small 
means than starting and keeping hotels in 
Mexican towns, where decent accommo- 
dations of the kind are w^anting, and 
where a great many Americans, as well 
as English and other foreigners, pass 
through. I could mention fifty such 



CHIHUAHUA WESTWARD. 157 

towns beside the example given. In the 
town referred to we were crowded, four 
and six together, into those small pens — 
all travelers passing backward and for- 
ward on business connected with mininof 
interests or similar industries. It seemed 
to be the universal custom of this portion 
of the country to get up at three o'clock 
to take the dilioence, no matter how longf 
or short the drive was to be. We were 
going only forty miles farther the next 
day to Carichic ; the diligence returned 
nearly eighty miles to Chihuahua, and 
another stage line branched off for Guer- 
rero, to the northwest ; but it appeared 
necessary that passengers should rise at 
the same hour in order that all the coaches 
might get away at the same time. 

The Carichic line is quite unfre- 
quented, and only an ordinary wagon is 



158 CAVE AND CUFF DWELLERS. 

used as a stage for the few Mexicans who 
go that way ; but in honor of my 
party tlie large dihgence was sent that 
day to carry us and all our luggage. 
With the first streak of dawn we were 
threading our way backward and forward 
across the little stream that runs through 
the town, past sleeping pigs, geese, 
chickens, dogs, burros, and Mexicans — 
an almost indiscriminate mass strung 
along the roadside. This road led past 
the big quartz mill, grinding away day 
and night, and by it we climbed up and 
out of the narrow canon till the vicsa 
and the hills were reached. Afterward 
the drive was through beautiful park-like 
places, with groves of oak and pine, the 
road winding up and down the mountain 
side, until, early in the afternoon, we 
reached Carichic. On the road between 



CHIHUAHUA WESTWARD. 159 

Cusihuiriachic and Carichic we came to 
an adobe building, that departed in a 
very picturesque way from the everlasting 




MEXICAN ADOBE HOUSE FORTIFIED AGAINST APACHE RAIDS. 



mud box style of architecture so common 
to this countr}^ and for which departure 
we had to thank the Apaches. Not that 
they built it, for an Apache never built 
anything except under compulsion, and 
at that time compulsion of these Indians 
was about the scarcest thing in Mexico ; 
but, rather, they compelled the Mexicans 



l6o CAVE AND CLIFF DIVELLERS. 

to do it, that is, to erect corner towers at 
the four corners of the mud box, and con- I 
vert it into a building of defense. In the 
picturesque mountain scenery it looked 
at a short distance away like an old 

castle, and only a nearer inspection dis- 

I 

pelled the illusion. 

While at Cusihuiriachic we had looked \ 

I 

with some contempt on the primitive j 
accommodations of its forlorn and di- 
lapidated hotel, and had rather scouted j 
the idea of its being possible to find j 
a worse place or greater disregard for 
the common necessities of life in any 
habitable town. The little cell-like room, i 
with its wooden bench, tin wash basin, j 
and bare brick floor on which to stow 
one's bedding, seemed to be the ex- 
treme of simplicity ; therefore we be- \ 
lieved that Carichic could hardly do less '. 



CHIHUAHUA WESTWARD. l6l 

for US. But as everything Is relative in 
this world, I was soon to look back to the 
despised hotel as the last taste of civili- 
zation, and to appreciate it accordingly. 
On reaching Carichic, a town of six or 
seven hundred people, we were told there 
was no such thing as a lodging house for 
us, and that it would be necessary for us to 
camp in the streets or some field, unless 
our Mexican friend could induce the vil- 
lage priest to allow us the use of a large 
empty room in one corner of the big 
building he occupied. The loaning or 
renting of a large empty room does not 
seem to be an act of great hospitality, 
nevertheless it was so regarded. The 
Mexican gentleman, when passing back- 
ward and forward over the trail between 
his father's mines and Chihuahua, always 
made his headquarters with the priest or 



l62 CAVE AND CUFF DW FILERS. 

ciD'a, who was a great friend of his family ; 
but ever)tliing- and everybody from the 
United States he looked upon with sus- 
picion and distrust. Therefore, consider- 
ino- the circumstances, his readiness to 
allow us under his roof could only be 
considered as a marked hospitality, or as 
evidence of a disposition to oblige our 
mutual Mexican friend. Perhaps he was 
animated by a keen sense of duty, and 
found this a fitting opportunity to mortify 
the spirit. But, whatever his motive, we 
were given the use of the room. So the 
stage left us and our worldly possessions 
there, for at Carichic all roads ended, and, 
as soon as I could make my arrangements 
with a native packer for his pack train of 
mules, we were to take one of the narrow 
Indian trails leading back into the heart 
of the Sierra Madras. 



CHIHUAHUA WESTWARD. 163 

The priest's house was by far the most 
important in the village, being- built 
around a large interior court, with all the 
rooms facing on this court, except the 
one given for our use. At the entrance 
to this interior court was a large gate, 
which could be barricaded in case of 
danger or an Indian uprising. On one 
of the outside corners of the structure 
was a sort of storeroom, the door open- 
ing on the street, and next to this store- 
room — which contained a few old bottles 
and pieces of leather — was the room 
assigned to us. At one end of our room 
was a small fireplace, and along the rude 
adobe wall was a wooden bench, and near 
it a table. One window, with wooden 
bars, and the door, were the only open- 
ings. The floor was the common one of 
earth. As there was not a place in the 



1 64 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

town where food could be bought, it was 
necessary to open our boxes before our 
dinner could be prepared. Wood and 
water were soon brought, a fire started 
in the fireplace, and our simple meal 
could have been ready in fifteen minutes 
— and would have been anywhere except 
under the auspices of our Mexican cook. 
We tried to secure chickens and eggs — 
staple articles even on the frontier of 
Mexico — but were told that time would 
be required to get them, and that the 
next day would be the earliest moment 
at which they could be procured. Tor- 
tillas, however, were forthcoming, and 
these, with bacon, hard bread, cheese, 
and tea, made an excellent meal. Dio- 
nisio, or Dionysius in English, my cook, 
had been highly recommended to me at 
Chihuahua, and had been brought with 



CHIHUAHUA WESTWARD. 165 

me on that account, as I had been influ- 
enced by glowing- descriptions of his sup- 
posed good qualities. Since the morn- 
ing of our start from Chihuahua he had 
been the butt and laughingstock of even 
the slowest of the Mexicans, who had 
heaped all sorts of derisive epithets on 
him for his general stupidity. My only 
hope was that he would blossom out as a 
good cook when he had an opportunity ; 
but here I was doomed to receive the full 
shock of his utter incapacit}^, and to 
realize that he would only shine resplen- 
dently as a complete failure on the whole 
journey. Finally I was forced to the 
conclusion that he was palmed off on me 
simply to get him salaried and off the 
the hands of somebody else. Although 
we arrived at Carichic about noon, or 
shortly after, and preparations were be- 



1 66 CAVE AND CUFF DWELLERS. 

gun at once for our simple meal, we 
were compelled to eat it by the light of a 
tallow candle. It was evident that, if 
more than one meal a day was to be had, 
Dionicio would require an assistant to 
do all the work. 

As night approached the good padre 
tendered us the use of his parlor floor on 
which to spread our bedding. This 
room occupied one side of the interior 
court. It was a long, narrow place with- 
out windows, and lighted only through 
the wooden doorways, of which there 
were two. In one end of the room was 
a little old narrow iron bedstead ; at the 
other a small, black haircloth sofa, and 
a couple of chairs. On the walls were a 
picture of the Virgin and a small crucifix, 
while in another part, hung up beyond 
reach of the tallest man, was a small. 



CHIHUAHUA WESTWARD. 167 

a very small mirror, evidently regarded 
as a profane thing and not to be used. 
In the center of the room was a small 
strip of faded green Brussels carpet. 
The whole place had a most depressing 
air, and the bare earthen room outside 
was beautiful by comparison, for in the 
latter we had the sunshine, and could see 
the lovely blue sky, and all around the 
horizon, the rolling, tree-covered hills, 
with the distant peaks of the Sierra 
Madres in the background. Nature had 
been very lavish with this place, and at 
every point of the compass it was pic- 
turesque and beautiful in the extreme. 
About Carichic the soil is wonderfully 
fertile and the grass luxuriant. A lovely 
little mountain river winds by on one 
side of the village. The people are 
principally the civilized Tarahumari In- 



l68 CAVE AND CUFF DWELLERS. 

dians, and this is one of their largest 
towns. There is, however, as in all In- 
dian towns, a slight sprinkling of Mexi- 
cans, and to that portion of the com- 
munity we looked for mules to carry us 
back into the mountains. 

Shortly after my arrival a number of 
Indians were started out to look up the 
animals ; for we wished to get away the 
next morning if possible. When night 
came a part of the needed complement 
had not been found ; for Mexican mules 
are always turned loose to hunt their 
living, and they often wander off many 
miles, and it sometimes takes days to find 
them. All night long the Indians were 
again out scouring the hills, but in the 
morninof there were still not mules 
enough ; so nothing could be done but 
patiently await their arrival. The next 



CHIH UA H UA IV E ST WARD. 169 

morning Francisco, a most excellent 
packer, by taking one horse to carry a 
few light bundles, had animals enough to 
make a start. Horses are of no service 
whatever in these mountains. On the 
steep, rough, dangerous trails the small 
Mexican mule is the only animal that can 
possibly cling, crawl, and climb up and 
down the dizzy heights. The motley and 
scraggy assortment of beasts led up for 
our inspection that morning gave us the 
uncomfortable feelinor that we would 
never reach any place if we trusted to 
them. A little before ten o'clock my 
train of fourteen mules was started ; 
and we were told we must ride fast, as 
the trail just out of the town was good, 
and it was necessary to make the noon 
camp at a certain spot. The trail we 
took was one seldom used, except by the 



17° CAF£ AXD CLIFF DWELLERS. 

Indians, and a few Mexicans who held 
mining property in that portion of the 
mountains. It was, therefore, one of the 
roughest and steepest in that region. 
Instead of seeking any sort of grade, it 
struck out wherever fancy had dictated to 
the original Indian travelers, generally 
over the steepest peaks or along the edge 
of some high and dizzy precipice, even 
when this course was wholly unnecessary. 
Although that made it somewhat labori- 
ous for us, as well as our animals, it gave 
us unusually fine views and picturesque 
effects, and despite the roughness of the 
trail we rode fifteen miles that morning 
and made our noon camp on time. 
When but a very short distance out of 
Carichic, while crossing a high ridge, I 
observed, in a little valley below, a curi- 
ous looking creature skulking along half 



CHIHUAHUA WESTWARD. 171 

hidden from view, toward the entrance 
to a cave in a huge bowlder. I called 
the attention of my Mexican companion 
to him, and he said he was only one of 
the wilder Tarahumari Indians, who lived 
in this manner, and that I would see 
enough of them before I finished my 
journey. This was my first introduction 
to a strange people hidden away in 
those grand old mountains, and of which 
the world has known comparatively noth- 
ing. 



CHAPTER V. 

CENTRAL CHIHUAHUA IN THE LAND OF 

THE LIVING CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS 
^-THE TARAHUMARI INDIANS, CIVILIZED 
AND SAVAGE. 

T PROPOSE to devote the greater por- 
-'- tion of this chapter to a consideration 
of the Tarahumari Indians of Central and 
Southwestern Chihuahua, a tribe of abo- 
rigines that I have occasionally seen 
mentioned in works and articles on Mex- 
ico (especially its northern part), but of 
wMiich I can find no detailed account any- 
where in the literature I possess of this 
region. The fact of my having been in 

that country for some time, seeing and 

172 



TARAHUMARI INDIANS. 1 73 

investigating some of their most curious 
habitations and customs, coupled with 
what information I could get from a few 
hardy Mexican pioneers in the fastnesses 
of the great Sierra Madre range, who 
corroborate each other, constitutes the 
basis of my comments. 

Although the Tarahumari tribe of In- 
dians are not at all well known — for I 
doubt if many of my readers have ever 
heard of them — they are, nevertheless, a 
very numerous people, and were they in 
the United States or Canada, where sta- 
tistics of even the savages are much better 
kept than in Mexico, they would have an 
almost world-v/ide reputation. On ac- 
count of this utter lack of statistics it is 
impossible to state with close approxi- 
mation the number of Tarahumari Indi- 
ans in this part of the country. So I will 



174 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

have to rely on the estimates (really broad 
guesses) of those best informed, giving 
my readers the benefit of my own re- 
searches as a check, although not claim- 
ing they will make a very good one, to 
the wide range of estimates made by 
others. In a previous chapter I spoke of 
the number of these Indians, but really 
am inclined, from all I could learn of 
them, to estimate their number at twenty 
thousand or thereabouts. An Indian 
tribe of twenty thousand people in our 
own country would be heard of often 
enough in press and public to become a 
household word ; but the isolation of the 
Tarahumari Indians from the beaten lines 
of travel, and the little interest taken in 
them by local and governmental ofificials 
(especially the interest which would make 
their habitations, habits, and customs 



TARAHUMARI INDIANS. 1 75 

known to the world) have thrown a veil 
over them both dark and mysterious. 
Some tribes of no greater strength in the 
interior of Africa are better known to us 
at home than are these Tarahumaris of 
the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico. 
They are now seldom seen in the city of 
Chihuahua, or even on the diligence lines 
radiating to the many western points 
which draw their supplies from this 
town ; and it is only when the mule trails 
to the deeply hidden mountain mines are 
taken that they are seen at all. Still 
better, if one cuts loose from these too, 
he will be yet more likely to find them in 
all their rugged primitiveness. Those 
usually seen by the white traveler to these 
parts are called civilized, and live in log 
huts, tilling a bit of mountain slope, not 
unlike the lower classes of Mexico, whom 



176 CAVE AND CUFF DWELLERS. 

they copy in their departure from estab- 
lished habits. It is no wonder, therefore, 
that little has been said about them more 




A CIVILIZED TAKAHUMARI HOUSE. 



than to mention occasionally where they 
once lived in a country now held by a 
hiorher civilization. 

Even the word " Chihuahua " itself is a 
Tarahuniari word, and was applied to 
the site of the present city of Chihuahua ; 
its meaning is " the place where our best 
wares were made." The territory lying- 
between the line of the Mexican Central 



TARAHUMARI INDIANS. 177 

Railway (which cuts through a small part 
of their ancient country) and the Sierra 
Madras proper, or where diligences 
cease to go and all transportation is done 
on mule-back or with donkeys, the Tara- 
humaris have abandoned to invading 
civilization, or have obeyed its mandates 
and become civilized themselves. They 
are only found in a primitive state in the 
Sierra Madres, with the far greater excess 
on the eastern slopes of the wide range. 
Beyond the Tarahumaris to the west are 
the Mayo and Yaqui tribes of Indians, on 
the rich and level slopes of the Mexican 
States of Sinaloa and Sonora ; while on 
the north they come in contact with the 
omnipresent and widely feared Apache, 
whose hand was against everyone and 
everyone's hand against him. 

Though a peaceful tribe of Indians, as 



178 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

far as their relations with Mexico have 
been concerned, they nevertheless were 
not wanting- in the elements that made 
them good defenders of their land ; and 
the Apaches, so dreaded by others, gave 
the mountainous country of the Tarahu- 
maris a wide berth when on their raids in 
this direction. The Tarahumaris, equally 
armed, which they seldom were, were 
more than a match for these Bedouins of 
the boundary line between our own coun- 
try and Mexico. One who had ever seen 
a group of the wild Tarahumaris would 
not credit them with a warlike or ag- 
gressive disposition, or even with much 
of the defensive combativeness that is 
necessary to fight for one's country. Even 
the semi-civilized among them are shy 
and bashful to a point of childishness that 
I have never seen elsewhere among Indi- 



TARAHUMARI INDIANS. 179 

ans or other savages ; and I have lived 
among nine-tenths of the Indian tribes of 
the United States and a great number 
outside of our domains. Heretofore the 
Eskimo of North Hudson Bay I deemed 
the most modest of savages, but they are 
brigands compared with the Tarahumari 
natives. If they have the least intimation 
of a white man's approach, he stands as 
little show of seeing them as if they were 
some timid animal fleeing for life. 

A Mexican gentleman who owns a part 
interest in a rich silver mine in the great 
broken Barrancas leading out from the 
Sierra Madre toward the Pacific side, or 
into the States of Sinaloa and Sonora 
(but who always reached his mine by way 
of Chihuahua), told me that he had several 
times passed over the mountain trail on 
mule-back, when with a pack train, and 



I So CATE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

not seen a single Tarahumari, although 
the trip occupied a number of days in their 
country, and took him where he should 
have seen two or three hundred if they 
had made no effort to escape his notice. 
The country thereabouts is well wooded 
and often heavily timbered, and the timid 
native, hearing the clang of the mule 
shoes on the rough, rocky trail, will _at 
once retire to the seclusion of the nearest 
thick brush, and there wait until the in- 
truder is out of sioht. 

They do not fly like a flock of quails 
suddenly surprised by the hunter, how- 
ever, for, if caught, they generally stand 
and stare it out rather than seem to run 
from the white man while directly in his 
presence ; but if the latter is vigilant and 
keeps his eyes wide open, he will often 
see them skulking away among the trees 



TARAHUMARI INDIANS. l8l 

or behind the rocks as he is approaching 
their houses, or the caves or cHff dwell- 
ings wherein they abide. Of course, as 




AN INDIAN HOME BETWEEN ROCK PILLAR AND TREE. 



one would naturally expect, the more 
savage Tarahumari natives, or those 
living in the rocks, cliffs, and caves, or 
brush jacals, are much wilder and more 
timid than those pretending to adopt the 
forms and duties of civilization. It is 



1 82 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

this peculiarity that has made it so hard | 

i 
to understand or learn anything about 

them, and this too in a land where so | 

little interest is taken in gaining knowl- -j 

edge of the subject. j 

In my wanderings through this portion j 

of the Sierra Madres (and right here I 

might state that on some Mexican maps j 

this portion of the great range is occasion- ! 

ally labeled as the Sicj'va de Tarakumari, \ 

about the only place we ran across the j 

name) I was more fortunate in seeing a ! 

laro^e number of them enoaoed in more ' 

nearly all the labors and duties they are : 

known to follow than is usually the case : 

the civilized Tarahumari, living in rough 

stone and adobe houses, with brush 

fences around his cultivated fields ; and j 

the most savage of the race, acknowl- j 

edging none of the Mexican laws or j 



TARAHUMARI INDIANS. 183 

customs, and living in caves in the rocks 
or under the huge bowlders, or in cliffs 
high up the almost perpendicular faces 
of the rock, where they probably tend a 
few goats and plant their corn on steep 
slopes, using pointed sticks to make the 
holes in the ground into which the grains 
are deposited. 

In appearance the Tarahumari savage 
is, I think, a little above the average 
height of our own Indians in the South- 
west. They are well built, and very mus- 
cular, while the skin of the cave and 
cliff dweller is of the darkest hue of any 
American native I have ever seen, being 
almost a mixture of the Guinea negro with 
the average copper-colored aborigine that 
we are so accustomed to see in the west- 
ern parts of the United States. The 
civilized Tarahumaris are generally no- 



184 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

ticeably lighter in hue. The Mayos and 
Yaquis on the west, the Apaches to the 
north, the Tepehuanes to the south, and 
the Comanches to the east are Hghter in 
their complexions than the cave- and cliff- 
dwelling Tarahumaris, although they live 
in much warmer climates than the latter. 
There is every opportunity to inspect the 
skin of the savage Tarahumari, as they 
wear only a breechclout and a pair of 
rawhide sandals ; and if it be a little 
chilly — as it always is at evening, at 
night time, and morning on the elevated 
plateau land or mountainous regions of 
Mexico — they may add a scrape of moun- 
tain goat's wool over their naked shoul- 
ders. Their faces generally wear a mild, 
pleasing expression, and their women are 
not bad-looking for savages, although the 
older women break rapidly in appearance 



TARAHUMARI IXDIAXS. 185 

after passing- thirty to thirty-five years, as 
nearly as I could judge their ages. The 
savasre branch of the Tarahumaris is of 
course the more interesting as the most 
nearly representing our own Indians of 
fifty to one hundred years ago, or before 
white men came among them. The 
civilized are not unlike those we have 
cultivating the soil in a rude way around 
the western agencies ; although those of 
jNIexico have no governmental aid such 
as we so often and so lavishly pour into 
the laps of our copper-colored brethren 
of the Xorth. 

The savasre Tarahumari lives o-enerallv 
off all lines of communication, shunning 
even the mountain mule trails if he can. 
His abode is a cave in the mountain side 
or under the curving interior of some 
huo'e bowlder on the Q-round. 



1 86 CAVE AND CLIFF DIVELIERS. 

The Sierra Maclre Mountains, where 
they live, are extremely picturesque in 
their rock formation, oivine^ thousands of 
shapes I have never see elsewhere — 
battlements, towers, turrets, bastions, but- 
tresses and flying buttresses, great arches 
and architraves, while everything from a 
camel to a saddle can be descried in the 
many projecting forms. It is natural that 
in such formation — a curious blending of 
limestone pierced by more recent up- 
heavals of eruptive rock — many caves 
should be found, and also that the huge, 
irregular, granitic and gneissoid bowlders, 
left on the ground by the dissolving away 
of the softer limestone, should often lie 
so that their concavities could be taken 
advantage of by these earth-burrowing 
savaofes. 

The first cliff dwellers I saw were on 



TARAHUMARI INDIANS. 187 

the Bacochic River, the first day out on 
mule-back from Carichic. These cHff 
dwellers had taken a huge cave in the 
limestone rock, some seventy-five feet 
above the water and almost overhanging 
the picturesque stream. They had walled 
up its outward face nearly to the top, 
leaving the latter for ventilation probably, 
as rain could not beat in over the crest 
of the butting cliff. It had but one door, 
closed by an old torn goat hide, through 
which the inhabitants had to crawl, like 
the Eskimo into their snow huts ox igloos, 
rather than any other form of entrance I 
can liken it to. The only person we saw 
was a "wild man of the woods," who, with 
a bow and arrows in his hand and the 
skin of a wild animal around his loins for 
a breechclout, was skulking along the big 
bowlders near the foot of the cliff. A 



i8S CAVE AXD Cr.IFF DWELLERS. 

dozen determined men inside this cliff 
dwelling ought to have kept away an 
army corps not furnished with artillery, 
although I doubt if the occupants hold 
these caves on account of their defensive 
qualities, but rather for their convenience 
as places of habitation, needing but little 
work to make them subserve their rude 
and simple wants. My Mexican guide 
said they would only fly if we visited 
them, leaving a little parched corn, a 
rough metate or stone for grinding it, an 
unburned olla to hold their water, and 
some skins, and, perchance, worn-out 
native blankets for bedding ; so I desisted 
from such a useless trip as getting over 
to their eyrie to inspect it. 

About three months before my first 
expedition into Mexico, I saw a notice 
going the rounds of the press that living 



TARAHUMARI INDIANS. 189 

cliff dwellers had been seen in the San 
Mateo Mountains of New Mexico, and 
that as soon as the snow melted a 
mounted party would be organized to 
pursue and capture them ; but I have 
heard nothing from it, beyond the little 
stir created at the time, and which the 
finding of any living cliff dwellers any- 
where would be likely to create. Yet 
here are people of that description, of 
whom the world seems to have heard 
nothing. How many there are of them, 
as I have already said, it seems hard to 
tell. We saw at least five to six hundred 
scattered around in the fastnesses of this 
grand old mountain chain, and could 
probably have trebled this if we had been 
looking for cave and cliff dwellers alone 
along and off our line of travel. Let us 
place them at only three thousand in 



19° CAV£ AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

Strength, and we would have enough to 
write a huge book upon, giving as start- 
hng developments as one could probably 
make from the interior of some wholly 
unknown continent — in fact more curi- 
ous ; for the public is somewhat prepared 
for such a story by the large number of 
old deserted cliff dwellings found in Ari- 
zona and New Mexico, which have often 
been assigned to a people older than the 
ruins of the Toltec or Aztec races. That 
there is some relation between these old 
cliff dwellers and the new ones I thii^h 
more than likely ; and I believe thr.l 
most writers who have seen both, o: 
rather the ruins of the former and mucli 
of the life of the latter, as I have, would 
agree with me in this view. 

It is pretty clearly settled that the 
Apaches are Athabascans, and came from 



TARAHUMARI INDIANS. 191 

the far north ; and it seems not unlikely 
that they drove southward or extermi- 
nated the northern cliff dwellers, leaving 
only these here as representatives, al- 
though numerous beyond belief, of a most 
curious race generally supposed to be ex- 
tinct. The Pueblo Indians, of the same 
locality, by living fn larger communities 
and stronger abodes were better able to 
resist these Indian Northmen, and conse- 
quently some of their towns still exist ; 
but the old cliff dwellers, like the new 
ones, could in many cases be cut off from 
water by a persistent and aggressive 
enemy, such as the Apaches must have 
been then, when just fresh from their 
northern excursion. It is still more prob- 
able, however, that they drove them 
southward until the retreating cliff dwell- 
ers became so powerful by being massed 



192 CAl'J-: AND CUFF DWFI.LFRS. 

upon their southern brothers that they 
could resist further aggression, and there- 
fore eive successful battle to their old 
foe, as we know they have been able to 
do recently when the Apaches were per- 
forming such destructive work in this part 
of the country. 

It is a well-known fact in archaeology 
that a badly defeated people, driven from 
their country by a superior force of num- 
bers, and occupying a new and less desir- 
able tract, will generally reproduce their 
habitations, implements of the chase, and 
all other things which they may be called 
upon to construct in a much less perfect 
manner than when in their own country ; 
and I found the cave and cliff dwellings 
of the wild Tarahumaris in the Sierra 
Madre Mountains to be in general less 
perfect than the cliff dwellings far to the 



TARAHUMARI INDIANS. 193 

north, as those near Flagstaff, Ariz,, 
the cave and cliff dwellings in the Mancos 
Canon, and many others I could men- 
tion in our own Southwest. Whatever 
may be the relation between the dead 
and departed northern cliff dwellers and 
their southern living representatives, it 
seems to me that it would well pay some 
scientist to devote a few years to their 
thorough study, as Catlin did so well 
among the Sioux, Gushing with the 
Zunis, and many others I could mention. 
All these Tarahumaris, whether civ- 
ilized to the extent of agriculture, living 
in houses, and having the other arts in a 
crude degree, and embracing Christi- 
anity, or whether in the most savage 
state, naked to the skin except rawhide 
sandals, and living in caves or cliffs, while 
still worshiping the sun, and hoping for 



194 CAVE AND Cf.IFF DWELLERS. 

the return of Montezuma some day, all 
are to a great extent independent of the 
Mexican Government, much more than 
are any of the peaceable Indians of the 
United States from our own government, 
unless it be a few almost unknown tribes 
in the interior of Alaska. If a Tara- 
humari commits a crime against, or does 
an injury to, a Mexican or foreigner, the 
Mexican Government takes notice of it 
and tries to punish the offender; but be- 
tween themselves, except in a few cases 
of flagrant murder, they can conduct all 
administration of justice, as well as other 
matters, wholly by officers of their own 
selection and by their own codes and cus- 
toms. The very wild ones — the cliff and 
cave dwellers — know nothing of Mexican 
affairs, and in fact fly from all white 
people like so many quails when they 



TARAHUMARI INDIANS. 195 

approach. The more civiHzed elect their 
own chiefs and obey their executive man- 
dates so well, as a general thing, that 
there is really very little reason for the 
Mexicans to force their officials upon 
them, if their only object is a mainte- 
nance of peace. Still the half-wild tribes 
of some parts of the mountains even war 
against each other without asking the 
Mexican Government yes or no, and con- 
clude their own treaties as a result of 
such quarrels on their own basis. I was 
informed by Mr. Alberto Mendoza, a 
perfect master of both Spanish and Eng- 
lish, and an interpreter at one of the big 
Sierra Madres silver mines, where there 
also was employed an excellent Tara- 
humari interpreter, that such a war as I 
have described recently broke out and 
was carried on by two factions in adjoin- 



196 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

ing parts of the mountains. It was a 
very strange affair, of course, but I doubt 
if its existence was even known in any 
other part of Mexico. 

Singularly enough, the badge of office 
of the self-governing tribes is a scepter, 
if an ornamented stick held in the hand 
can be called a scepter. These black 
savages of the sierras obey it more im- 
plicitly, however, than if it were a loaded 
Gatling gun trained on them. Whenever 
a government ofiicial or justice seizes 
this mace of the Madre Mountains, and 
holds it aloft, every person in sight is 
quelled more effectually than if it were a 
stick of giant powder that would explode 
if they did not obey. Its name among 
them, translated, is " God's Justice," and 
certainly no superstitious people ever 
obeyed a mandate more readily and com- 



TARAHUMARI INDIANS. 1 97 

pletely than do they this mute expression 
of their own laws, and without which 
they would often be lawless under the 
same circumstances. 

An almost ludicrous case was told me 
of a foul murder having been committed 
by the wild Tarahumaris on the person 
of a civilized one, the murderers holding 
possession of the body. It was natural 
that the civilized faction should want the 
corpse for burial, and they demanded it, 
but it was refused. The civilized natives 
then went to the boundary line of the 
two factions, hoping to get the chief of 
the wild savages to assist them. Here 
they found some four or five hundred of 
the latter drawn up in battle array, with 
bows and arrows, to dispute their passage 
into their own land. The chief was 
absent and refused to come to the assist- 



198 CAVE AXD CUFF DWELLERS. \ 

ance of the others, although demanded 

in the name of the Mexican law, with 1 

corresponding punishment. The civ- ' 

ilized natives then conceived the idea of 

a small body of picked men going in a 

roundabout way to compel his attend- : 

ance, which was done, although he still ! 

refused to exercise his authority to com- j 

pel his own band to give up the corpse 1 

of the dead Tarahumari. The forcing 

of the wild chief into the dispute was 

about to brino- on a collision between the 

two factions, when one of the civilized \ 

natives wrenched his scepter from his j 

hand, waved it aloft, and demanded of 

the wild ones that they cease all hostile 

demonstrations and bring in the body of '< 

the murdered man, all of which they did j 

i 
in the name of " God's Justice." j 

Nearly all the civilized Tarahumaris | 



TARAHUMARI INDIANS. 199 

are Christianized, while the wild ones 
living in cliffs and caves are— if they can 
be called anything— still worshipers of the 
sun and believers in the return of Monte- 
zuma ; so this "God's Justice," as repre- 
sented so effectually by the mace or scep- 
ter, cannot mean solely the Christian God 
or that of the Tarahumaris, for in either 
case it would have no effect on the other. 
There can be only one conclusion that I 
can see, and that is that this badge of 
authority is as old as the Tarahumaris 
themselves, or at least antedates the con- 
version of the civilized ones by the old 
Jesuits, or the conquering of the country 
by the Spaniards from Europe. The 
Mexicans use nothing of the kind except, 
probably, in their state and federal legis- 
latures, as we do in some of ours, and it 
is not at all likely that these natives, 




200 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

especially the wild ones, would have bor- 
rowed it from so distant and almost never 
visited a source. 

The civilized Tarahumaris have their 
own elections, patterned after the Mexi- 
cans in a crude way, while the wilder 
ones have their chiefs, but whether they 
are elected or hereditary I was not able 
to ascertain ; I am inclined to think it is 
the former. 

The wildest known of the Tarahumari 
iff and cave dwellers are probably those 
of the Barranca del Cobre, which can be 
seen from the Grand Barranca of the 
Urique, as one skirts its dizzy cliffs, being 
in fact a spur of the Grand Barranca lead- 
ing out to the east. There are undoubt- 
edly many other, but unknown, places 
where these savages dwell, if possible 
more primitive than those of the Barranca 



TARAHUMARI INDIANS. 20 1 

del Cobre. In this canon the diff dwellers 
are often stark naked, except for a pair of 
guarr aches, or rawhide sandals, these 
protecting the soles of the feet from the 
flint-like broken rocks of this part of the 
country, and without which even their 
tough hides would soon be disabled. 
Upon the approach of whites they fly to 
their birdlike houses in the precipitous 
cliffs like so many timid animals seeking 
their burrows. 

The next nearest grade of these people 
goes so far as to ornament the person 
with breechclouts after the latest fashion 
set by Adam and Eve, the more savage 
of these again using the skins of wild 
animals for this purpose, while the better 
grade manages to secure some dirty 
clothes from the others to finish out this 
necessary part of their wardrobe. When 



202 CAr£ AXD CLIFF DWELLERS. 

it is reflected that the winters are quite 
severe on the higher parts of these 
sierras, the snow being some winters two 
and three feet deep, it is quite easy to 
conceive what constitutional toughness 
these fellows must have in their scanty 
attire. 

An Eskimo would long to get back to 
the Arctic if he were here, so he could 
sit on an iceberg and get warm. 

On the great mountain trails their feats 
of endurance are almost of a marvelous 
character. The semi-civilized are often 
employed as couriers, mail carriers, etc., 
and in all cases they invariably make from 
three to five times the distance covered 
by the whites in the same time, while 
there is no known domesticated animal 
that can possibly keep pace with them in 
the mountains. 



TkRAHUMARI INDIANS. 203 

It takes six or seven hours of fairly 
continuous climbing to make, by mule- 
back, from the mine in a deep gulch to 
the " cumbra," or crest of the Barranca 
del Cobre, by a most difficult mountain 
trail, the ascent made being five thousand 
to six thousand feet. It takes four hours 
to descend in the same way. A message 
was sent from " la cumbra " by a Tara- 
humari foot runner to a person at the 
mine and an answer received in an hour 
and twenty minutes, the same messenger 
carrying the letter both ways, or making 
the round trip. 

One day a Tarahumari carrier passed us 
just after we had gone into camp about 
three o'clock in the afternoon, bound for 
the same point we expected to reach in 
three days' hard travel by mule-back. I 
wanted to send a message by him to this 



204 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

place, and on ascertaining when he would 
reach it was, as my hearers will easily 
infer, somewhat astonished to find out 
that he expected to make it that night, 
and I was afterward informed that he 
had done so. 

Not a great many years ago the mail 
from Chihuahua to Batopilas was carried 
by a courier on his back, who made the 
distance over the Sierra Madre range, a 
good 250 miles, and return, or a total of 
500 miles, in six days. Here he rested 
one day and repeated his trip, his con- 
tract being for weekly service. Along- 
side of this the best records ever made in 
the many six days' "go-as-you-please" 
contests that are heard of in the great 
cities of the United States sink into 
almost contemptible insignificance. I 
could give a dozen other instances, but 



TARAHUMARI INDIANS. 20$ 

these are enough. Of course these run- 
ners make many " cut offs " from the 
estabhshed mule trails when their course 
Is along them, and they thus save dis- 
tance, but making all such allowance their 
endurance Is still phenomenal. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THROUGH THE SIERRA MADRES ON MULE- 
BACK WESTWARD FROM CARICHIC. 

A S our next month was passed on 
-^ ^ mule-back, and Mexican mule-back 
at that, I think it would be not at all in- 
appropriate to make a brief dissertation 
on this kind of brute for the necessary 
merits and demerits of the journey. 

The Mexican mule is a sort of a cross 
between a mountain goat and a flying 
squirrel, with the distinct difference that 
its surplus electricity flows off from the 
negative pole instead of the positive, as 
with the goat. It is in its meanderings 

on the mountain trail that it shines 
206 



THROUGH THE SIERRA MADRES. 207 

resplendent, but with a luster wholly its 
own, that can be no more compared with 
any other than can the flash of the 
diamond be compared with the fire of the 
opal. I would like to place it alongside 
of the American mule for comparison in 
the "deadly double column " of the news- 
paper, but the Mexican beast would kick 
out the intervening rule and " pi " the 
type before enough was up to form an 
opinion. On the mountain trail this dis- 
tinct species of mule w^as never known to 
fall, although he has an exasperating and 
blood-curdling way of stumbling along 
over it that would raise the hair of a bald- 
headed man on end. Many a time I 
have watched the mule I was compelled 
to ride with a view of discoverinsf his 
methods of trying to frighten me to death 
as payment for past injuries. Oftentimes 



2o8 CAFE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

the trail would lead past dizzy heights or 
cliffs, where one could look sheer down 
far enouoh to be dead before he reached 
the bottom should he fall, and every few 
feet aloncr the trail of not over a foot in 
width it would tumble in a foot or so and 
again take up the original inclination of 
the mountain, or about that of the lean- 
ing tower of Pisa. Here the mule would 
always be sure to stick one foot over and 
stumble a little bit, but regain its equi- 
librium at the next step, having clearly 
done it intentionally, and for no other 
purpose than pure maliciousness. One 
can imagine the cool Alpine zephyr that 
is wafted up the vertebrae with sufificient 
force to blow the hair straight up on end. 
If you have touched the beast within the 
last three or four days with the whip, or 
dug into its sides with the spurs when it 



THROUGH THE SIERRA MADRES. 209 

was absorbed in melancholy reflections, 
it'll be sure to remember it when you are 
climbing over the comb of a cliff from 
two thousand to three thousand feet high, 
and at the least movement of your feet or 
twitching of your fingers it will throw its 
head high in the air, like a hound on the 
scent, and go stumbling over every pebble 
and blade of grass on the dangerous way, 
evidently trying to make you regret that 
you had ever tried to punish so delicate a 
creature. At any other time you can 
turn double somersaults on its back, or 
act like a raving maniac, and it will not 
increase its funereal march a foot a day as 
the result of your actions. Whenever a 
trail leads exceptionally near a cliff, before 
it turns on the reverse grade down or up 
hill, the Mexican mule never fails to go 
within an inch of the crest and let his 



2IO CAr£ AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

leg over with a slight quiver, as he turns 
around. 

All these mountain trails are full of 
little round, hard stones about the size of 
marbles, and even larger ones, hidden 
underneath a carpeting of pine needles. 
These are liable to make a mule stumble 
if two feet are on the stones at once, but 
this is very seldom, although they always 
go sliding over them on the steeper trails. 
It is wonderful how these round rocks, 
hidden under the pine needles on the 
trail or off it, will throw a human being 
prostrate if he dismounts a few minutes 
to take a walk on a slope and stretch his 
stiffened limbs. Of course the mule, 
under headway, is liable to walk over him 
before it can stop or the person pick him- 
self up. 

There is another pastime in which the 



THROUGH THE SIERRA MADRES. 211 

Mexican mule delights, and in which you 
won't. It likes to deviate enough to go 
under every low-branched tree on the 
trail, and so universal is this trait of char- 
acter that the trail seems to lead from 
one low tree or vine to another, just as 
the mule has a mind to make it. The 
dodo-ino- of limbs and branches amonor 
the pines, cypresses, and oaks in the high 
lands was not so bad, but down in the 
tieri^a caliente or hot lands, where brambly 
mesquite and thorny vines were tearing 
crescents out of your clothes until 
you looked like a group of Turkish 
ensigns, it was much more monotonous. 
The beast I was compelled to ride had 
one ear cut off near the head, and looked 
top-heavy in the extreme. As a mule's 
ears make up a goodly portion of it, as 
seen in elevation from the saddle on its 



212 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

back, I was always frightened when he 
approached a cliff on the unabridged side, 
and instinctively leaned in to counterpoise 
the heavy weight that I thought might 
drag us over the precipice. He was 
familiarly known by the party as " Old 
Steamboat," " Old Lumber Yard," and 
other names Indicating these character- 
istics ; but he was large and so was I, and 
he fell to my lot. When I first saw his 
abbreviated auricular appendage, as a 
member of the " Society for the Preven- 
tion of Cruelty to Mules," I felt incensed 
upon hearing that it had been lost by the 
cut of a whip in the hands of a previous 
driver ; but before we had been ac- 
quainted a week I had transferred all my 
sympathy from the mule to the man, 
whoever he may have been. On the 
level ground this mule was slower than 



THROUGH THE SIERRA MADRES. 213 

the Mexican cook, who took fifteen 
minutes to wash a spoon ; but on a peril- 
ous path of half a foot in width, on a 
dizzy precipice, the way he could box the 
compass with the lone ear, so as to catch 
some faint sound at which he could get 
frightened at this inopportune time, made 
me wish I could cut off the other ear at 
about the third cervical vertebra. 

About half-past one on the first day 
out from Carichic we stopped for our 
lunch in a grove of beautiful pines in the 
valley of the Pasigochic, on the banks of 
a little stream of the same name. As I 
have said, we had ridden about fifteen 
miles from Carichic and were all very 
much in need of rest. Just before lunch- 
ing we passed a number of Tarahumari 
Indians of the civilized class, working in 
a small field of about three or four acres. 



214 CAVE AXD CUFF DWELLERS. 

Even in this small space there were a 
dozen others hard at work. Their dark, 
swarthy bodies were almost the color of 
the rich soil in which they toiled, making 
their white breechclouts and white straw 
hats, the only things they wore, look 




A TARAHUMARI MOUNTAIN HOME. 

curious enough when they moved about 
like so many unpoetical ghosts, as seen 
at a distance. 

We were now well into the Sierra 
Madre range, and although the scenery 



ON MULE-BACK FROM CARICHIC. 215 

was so far about the equal of the Alle- 
ghanies or Catskills, there was not much 
level ground for cultivation, and this was 
eagerly seized by the working natives, 
not only to raise crops for their own use, 
but to have some to sell ; for from six to 
seven days' travel to the southwest was 
the richest silver district in the world, 
where all kinds of produce brought fabu- 
lous prices that would have enriched an 
American farmer in one season— flour 
forty cents a pound and other things in 
proportion. Indeed one of the best dis- 
tinctions that could be made between the 
wild and civilized Tarahumaris is the fact 
that the former knows nothing of money 
nor makes any attempt to secure it, barter- 
ing directly by exchange with the civilized 
native for those things he wants and does 
not make ; while the latter makes money 



2i6 CAV£ AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

his medium of exchange, and seems to 
thoroughly appreciate its value. 

The midday lunch for a party of Mex- 
icans movino- throuoh the mountains is 
quite long by comparison with American 
parties under like circumstances. It was 
two hours before we got away again. 
There are probably two reasons for this, 
one being that the midday is generally 
warmer with them than with us, although 
this did not apply to us in the cool, tim- 
bered regions of the high sierras ; while 
the second reason is clearly found in the 
fact that they seldom feed their mules on 
these mountain trips, and must give them 
time to graze a fair-sized meal at noon. 
The Mexican packs and unpacks the 
mules twice a day, the American but 
once ; for by feeding grain he can keep 
going until they want to camp, making it 



ox MULE-BACK FROM CARICHIC. 217 

much earlier than his Mexican brother, 
who, starting at three o'clock, has to go 
until six or seven to make a respectable 
afternoon's march. By three o'clock the 
American is generally in camp, having 
made the same distance and having done 
half the work. It is doubtful, however, 
if American mules would do as well here 
under like circumstances. 

After leaving the pretty and pictur- 
esque Pasigochic, a high hill is ascended, 
and late that afternoon we passed the 
highest point between the morning and 
evening camps, eighteen hundred feet. 
On the high hills were seen the beau- 
tiful madrona tree, or strawberry tree, 
with blood-red bark, and bright o-reen 
and yellow leaves, and covered with white 
blossoms, so startling a mixture of colors 
that it would hardly be believed if painted 



2l8 CAJ'E AXD CLIFF DWELLERS. 

and put on exhibition. They were every- 
where, from the merest bush in size to 
trees twenty and thirty feet in height. 
In form they are not unHl>:e a spreading 
apple tree, with strongly contorted and 
twisted branches. Then there were many 
oaks of different kinds, the ejicino robles 
or everlasting oak, the white oak, and the 
little black variety. There were a dozen 
kinds I knew nothing of in my limited 
vocabulary of forest trees. The pines 
were beautiful, and in many places forty 
to fifty merchantable trees to the acre, 
straight as an arrow, and without a limb 
for sixty or seventy feet from the 
ground. In one or two clusters I noticed 
groups of pines like those an old lumber- 
man once pointed out to me in the for- 
ests of Oregon as good mast timber. I 
have seen the same repeated dozens of 



OA' MULE-BACK FROM CARICHIC. 219 

times on the slopes of the Sierra Madre 
range. This dense mass of spar and 
mast timber, as I shall call it, is nearly 
always found on the richest soil of the 
mountain, generally in the narrow little 
valleys where the silt from the sides is 
swept down by the rains until the soil is 
many feet deep. 

The great coniferous forest of the 
northern part of the Sierra Madre range 
of Mexico is probably one of the largest 
in the world (it is undoubtedly the larg- 
est virgin forest on either continent), and 
when its resources are opened by well- 
constructed wagon roads, or, better still, 
by a railway system, it will undoubtedly 
prove an enormous source of revenue to 
the Mexican States of Chihuahua and 
Sonora, and to no little extent those of 
Sinaloaand Durango — a source nearly as 



2 20 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

profitable as their mineral wealth, and 
this is saying a great deal, for these 
States comprise the richest silver district 
in the world. 

That evening we camped in the valley 
of the Guigochic, on another beautiful 
mountain stream, where a little park of 
an acre or two gave our mules some 
sweet alpine grasses, which warranted us 
in believing that half the morning would 
not be passed in chasing over the hills to 
find stray mules, as is so often the case in 
Mexico when these beasts are turned loose 
to search for their food. We were all 
thoroughly tired with our first day's ride 
on mule-back, but nevertheless turned in 
to help the cook, as we realized that we 
wanted something to eat that night. The 
tent v/as pitched between two magnificent 
pines of enormous size, and I slept to the 



ON MULE-BACK FROM CARICHIC. 221 

music of the wind in their branches. We 
left our camp by the Hght of the camp 
fire next morning and started over the 
crest of one of the steepest mountains 
overlooking our camp. Halfway up the 
steep trail we passed two graves of stone 
heaps surmounted by rough wooden 
crosses. At this spot a man and his wife 
had been killed by the Apaches a few 
years ago. These same Apaches had 
penetrated too far into Tarahumari land, 
and after a disastrous encounter with the 
latter were fleeing themselves, when they 
met the defenseless Mexican and his wife 
and killed them. This was the farthest 
point west where a white person had been 
killed by Apache Indians in this part of 
Chihuahua. After climbing this hill of 
1500 or 1600 feet our trail still led up- 
ward, the mountains growing steeper and 



2 22 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

Steeper. When we reached the top of 
one peak we would immediately begin 
the zigzag descent, then climb up another 
and down agfain. Sometimes the trail 
wound over a bald, rocky peak, where 
steps by long years of use had been worn 
deep in the soft rock ; and into these little 
places the mules would carefully place 
their feet, there really being no other foot- 
hold for them. Again there would be a 
chain of gigantic stairs leading down 
some steep mountain side, where one 
could look hundreds of feet, and see tall 
trees that from such an elevation re- 
sembled small shrubs. The nimble and 
surefooted animals would place all four 
feet together and jump down from one 
step to another, oftentimes more than 
their own height, so that one felt sure of 
being sent flying over the cliff. Again, 



ON MULE-BACK FROM CARICHIC. 223 

the trail would be over the loose, rolling 
stones, and the little animals would fairly 
slide down these dangerous places. By 
noon we reached the quaint little civi- 
lized pueblo of Tarahumari Indians 
named Naqueachic, they living in rude 
log houses instead of caves or cliff dwell- 
ings. 

At the pueblo of Naqueachic of civi- 
lized Tarahumaris I found a curious 
method of cookinor. Over the fire the 
food was boiling in two different dishes. 
One contained a substance that looked 
like a compound of mucilage and brick 
dust. The mademoiselle in charge would 
take up a calabash gourd full, holding a 
pint or two, and, although the gourd was 
held mouth up all the time, before it was 
three feet above the pot it was completely 
emptied, so tenacious and stringy was the 



224 CAVE AND CI.IFF DWELLERS. 

substance, like the white of a soft boiled 
egg. This was repeated every five or ten 
seconds, evidently to keep it from burn- 
ing. It is made from the soft, pulpy 
leaves or stalks of the nopal cactus ; and 
is about as palatable to a white man as 
gruel and sawdust would be. The other 
pot contained some mixture of corn, 
beans, and probably one or two other 
more savage ingredients, a sort of Sierra 
Madre succotash. 

In one corner of the room — I might 
say the house, for there was only one 
room in the house — was a rude loom for 
weaving blankets, which they make from 
the wool of their mountain sheep, and 
which under all the circumstances are 
quite creditable. The ornamentation is 
not very great, and yet none of them 
lack this seemingly necessary part of 



ON M ULE-BA CK FR OM CA RICH I C. 225 

a blanket. These blankets are usually of 
a dark brown color, with one or two dark 
yellow stripes across them at the ends. 
Being " all wool and a yard wide " they 
are quite warm, much warmer than some 
Mexican woolen blankets that I bought 
at Chihuahua, which seemed better calcu- 
lated to keep the heat out on the cold 
nights in the mountains than to keep it in. 

The civilized Tarahumaris are quite 
cleanly for savages, noticeably more so 
than the lower order of Mexicans, and 
yet there Is plenty of room, great, un- 
swept back counties of It, for improve- 
ment in this respect. 

After leaving the interesting little vil- 
lage of Naqueachic we at once started 
over a high range or crest some twenty- 
nine hundred feet above our level, and 
from the top could look down In a beauti- 



226 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

ful valley on one of the most important 
Tarahiimari villages in the Sierra Madres, 
the town of Sisoguichic. I would have 




i\^'-- 



OLD TARAirUMARI INDIAN. 



liked to camp here for the night, but as 
there was no corn for the mules or grass 
for them to graze on we were compelled 
to proceed. 



CHAPTER VII. 

SOUTHWESTERN CHIHUAHUA AMONG THE 

CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS IN THE 
HEART OF THE SIERRA MADRE RANGE. 

'T^HAT night our camp was in an 
-■- immense pine forest on the crest of 
one of the high peaks, and here we 
parted with our Mexican friend Don 
Augustin Becerra, to whom we had 
already become deeply indebted, and who 
found it necessary to hasten on to his 
father's mines at Urique, which we were 
to make more leisurely. 

There is a widely dispersed variety of 
pitch pine in these mountains, which may 

be said to be the candles or the lanterns 

227 



228 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

of the natives of the country. The night 
scenes in the pitch-pine States of the 
South have long formed themes in prose 
and poetry, but those States are in the 
flat-land coasts of our country, with no 
scenery to give any of the strange, v^eird 
effects of a broken land. At one camp I 
made upon a high potrcro, I saw such a 
scene. It was in a little flat place in the 
mountain, where the grass was good for 
the mules, but where the water was far 
down the precipitous ravine or box canon 
that opened out by a gorge to a great 
barranca as deep and wide as the Grand 
Canon of the Colorado. A half-dozen 
men at a time, all with pitch-pine torches, 
descended after water, or to drive the 
mules to and from water. As they cut 
long slivers of pine, eight to ten feet in 
length, that blaze for two-thirds to three- 



SOUTH WESTERN CHIHUAHUA. 229 

fourths their lencrth, the strange effect on 
the wild scener3% stretching for miles, can 
be more easily conceived than described. 
To have put it faithfully on canvas would 
have made the reputation of any artist, 
and the equal of which I have never seen. 
Vereschag'in's " My Camp in the Hima- 
layas " seemed almost tame by comparison. 
The great wide sombreros, glittering 
with silver — for even the common peons 
of Mexico have more costly hats than the 
" Four Hundred " of New York — the 
brioht red foliao^e of the manzanillas and 
the madrono trees, rendered doubly lurid 
by the reflection of the torches, the sharp 
rocks of the canon in battlemented and 
castellated confusion, stretching off to the 
mighty barranca five thousand to six 
thousand feet deep, really made up a 
picture that not one painter in a thousand 



230 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

could have done justice to, and not one 
could imitate. 

On our third day out we crossed a 
most picturesque stream called the Pa- 
nascos River. Near the crossing were a 
number of huge irregular bowlders lying 
at the foot of a sculptured cliff. Under 
those that formed cave-like recesses were 
a number of Tarahumari cave dwellers, 
looking absolutely comical in their wide- 
brim straw hats of coarse grass and their 
primitive breechclouts. Their skins were 
so dark-colored that had it not been for 
this white clothing at the two termini it 
would have been hard to make them out 
in the dark, deep caverns into which most 
of them fled upon our approach. 

A recently occupied cave of these 
strange earth-burrowing savages could 
nearly always be told by the stains of 



IN THE SIERRA MADRE RANGE. 233 

ascending smoke from the highest point 
of entrance to the cave. If the cave has 
been abandoned for any length of time 
the rain soon wipes out this sure sign of 




HOME OF CAVE DWELLERS. 



habitation. We passed a large number 
of caves with funnel-shaped smoke stains, 
leading up from the outside, but the 
silence of death surrounded them, as if 
human life had never been within a mile 
of the place ; but I have not the remotest 



234 CAVE AND CUFF DWELLERS. 

doubt that there were a dozen people 
inside of each, peeping at us from around 
the dark corners, having heard our 
approach and lied in time to keep well 
out of our sight. Nothing is noisier 
than a Mexican mule packer, and the 
mountains are always resounding with his 
pious shouting to his lazy, plodding 
animals as he urges them on ; so I con- 
sidered it very lucky indeed that we saw 
as many of the living cave and cliff 
dwellers as we actuall)- did, so excessively 
shy are these poor, timid creatures. 

One of our Mexican packers tried to 
buy a slieep of one of the civilized Tara- 
humaris a little farther on, but he would 
not part with one for any money, although 
apparently having plenty to spare. Many 
of the pueblos of the civilized Tara- 
humaris are really isolated communities, 



IN THE SIERRA MADRE RANGE. 235 

raising all they need for food from the 
soil, or wool for clothing, or both from 
animals of the chase, and consequently 
seldom buying or selling. 

That same day we passed La Sierra 
de los Ojitos. It is a high, shaggy 
mountain, covered to the very top with a 
dense forest of pine, and indicates where 
the waters divide to the east and west. 
On its slope that we faced, its rivulets 
poured their contents into the Gulf of 
Mexico, while from the opposite slope 
they go into the Pacific Ocean, or rather 
its great Mexican arm, the Gulf of Cali- 
fornia. It is the highest point of the 
Sierra Madres that we encountered on 
the trail, and I found it to be 12,500 
feet above the level of the sea, with La 
Sierra de los Ojitos towering some 2000 
to 3000 feet higher on our left. I 



236 CAJ'JS AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

camped that night in a picturesque box 
canon, which I named Carillo Cajon after 
the Governor of the State of Chihuahua, 
who had done a great deal to help the 
expedition with all the local authorities 
in the different parts of the State that I 
might visit. We camped at the first 
available point we could find, and even 
here slept at an inclination of some thirty- 
degrees to the level, the mules grazing 
nearly overhead above us and occasionally 
rolling a stone down on us during the 
night. 

This part of the Sierra Madres has a 
great deal of game in it, but the most 
essential things to hunt it with would 
be a good pair of wings, things that un- 
fortunately travelers never have. There 
are many white-tailed deer in the well- 
wooded valleys, but a brass band would 



IN THE SIERRA MADRE RANGE. 237 

•J 

find them before a Mexican pack train, as 
it makes much less noise. In fact this is 
true of nearly all kinds of game that can 
be frightened off by the lung power of 
man. There are also many bears here, 
but we saw none, nor any fresh signs of 
them. It is said by those who ought to 
know that there are two kinds of bears in 
the Sierra Madre range, lying between 
Chihuahua and Sonora — the common 
black species, and a huge brown kind that 
must be, I think, the cinnamon or the 
grizzly bear, so common farther north. 
The Tarahumari natives hunt the deer in 
a very singular manner, but they leave 
the bears alone, as their weapons, the 
bows of mora wood, are not strong 
enough for such an uncertain encounter. 
The jaguar, or Mexican spotted panther, 
is known as far north as this, but 



238 CAF£: AND CUFF DWELLERS. 

seems to keep to the warm lands, or 
tierra caliente, which restricts it to the 
low plains of Sonora and Sinaloa, just 
west of here. 

The endurance of these savage sons of 
the sierras in chasing deer is wonderful. 
They take a small native dog and starve 
it for three or four days till it has a most 
ravenous appetite ; then they go deer 
hunting, and put this keen-nosed, hungry 
animal on the freshest deer trail they can 
find. It is perfectly needless to add that 
he follows it with a vim and energy un- 
known to full stomachs. Fast as a hun- 
gry, starved dog is on a trail that prom- 
ises a good breakfast, he does not keep 
far ahead of the swift-footed cliff dweller, 
who is always close enough behind to 
render any assistance that may be re- 
quired if the deer is overtaken or a 



IN THE SIERRA MADRE RANGE. 239 

fresher trail is run across. I should 
say the dog is always liberally rewarded 
if the hunt is a success. 

If night overtakes the pursuers they 
sleep on the trail, and resume the chase 
as early next morning as the light will 
allow. Once on the trail, however, the 
deer is a doomed animal, although the 
pursuers have been known to sleep for 
two or three nights on its course before 
it was overtaken, especially if the fleeing 
animal knew in some way that it was pur- 
sued longf before it was overtaken. Once 
overhauled, a series of tactics is begun so 
as to divide the labor of the pursuit be- 
tween the dog and the man, but to give 
no corresponding advantage to the deer. 
Wide detours are forced upon the deer 
by the swift dog, each recurring one be- 
ing easier to make, and the pursued ani- 



240 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

mal is brought near the man, who, with 
loud shouts and demonstrations, heads 
off the exhausted animal every Httle 
while and turns it back on the pursuing 
dog, until finally in one of the retreats it 
falls a temporary prey to its canine 
foe, when the man rushes in and with a 
knife soon dispatches the game. 

Early one morning we could hear wild 
turkeys calling from one cliff to the 
other, but as these were over a thousand 
feet higher and steeper than the leaning- 
tower of Pisa, I suddenly lost all the wild 
turkey zeal I had brought along with me 
for the trip. Then, again, if a com- 
mander leaves his pack train just as they 
are getting away, he will surely find a 
delay of an hour or two on his hands, for 
which it would take a dozen turkeys to 
make amends. There is a plentiful sup- 




AN OCCUPIED CAVE DWELLING 



IN THE SIERRA MADRE RANGE. 243 

ply of game in the Mexican sierras, how- 
ever, for any sportsman who wishes to 
devote his attention directly to that 
pastime, as shown by the big scores the 
natives make when they go on a hunting 
trip. 

Early next morning we made a start 
from our camp on the canon's side, by 
the light of the pitch-pine torches, and 
climbed over and out of the deep gorge 
into a more open country, where the sun- 
light could penetrate. Here the trail 
was of velvety softness, and we surprised 
a number of cave-dwelling Indians sitting 
and standing about their homes among 
the big bowlders. The only garments 
they had on were ragged breechcloths of 
cotton, but some had the extra adorn- 
ment of a strip of red cloth about their 
shocky black hair. The air was intensely 



244 CAVE AND CUFF DWELLERS. 

cold, SO much so that we were wrapped 
in our heaviest coats, but these savages 
apparently did not feel the cold, and if 
they shivered at all it was probably at the 
sight of us — for their fear was quite 
evident — and it was plain they longed to 
beat a retreat to their huge rocky homes ; 
but they stood it out till we passed, and 
then in an instant they vanished. 

Before this day's march was ended we 
passed through a little Tarahumari moun- 
tain town called Churo. It was in a small 
circular valley, and on all sides were the 
steep, high peaks of the mountains. 
Here the Indians had tried to raise a few 
apples, but the trees were gnarled and 
twisted, and the apples not much larger 
than those of wild crab trees, although 
much sweeter to the taste. Of course 
there was no store of any kind in the lit- 




"^^^^}^?^-*^V 



HOME OF CAVE DWELLER. 



IN THE SIERRA MADRE RANGE. '2i,1 

tie settlement, and if Mexicans, passing 
through the place, wished to obtain any- 
thing from the Indians, their method was 
to take it, placing whatever they consid- 
ered its equivalent in silver before the 
Indian, and leaving it for the latter to 
accept. If asked to sell any of their 
produce or set a price on it, the Indians 
stolidly refuse, even though the price may 
be two or three times greater than they 
could possibly obtain at the nearest Mexi- 
can mining town. They know nothing 
of the value of gold, and paper money 
they utterly refuse ; silver is the only 
money they will take even in this reluctant 
fashion. 

Upon reaching Cusihuiriachic I found 
that my Winchester rifle had been 
left in the stage office in Chihuahua, 
I sent back word to forward it by next 



248 CAVE AND CI. IFF DWELLERS. 

Stage to Carichic, but as the next stage 
did not arrive at that place for four or 
five days we would have just that much 
start of it in the mountains, and we there- 
fore at that place engaged a Tarahumari 
Indian boy to bring it whenever it did 
arrive. The qvwx reached Carichic at noon 
of one day, and early the next forenoon 
the young Indian appeared on our trail 
with it, having made the distance in one 
night and a little over half a day. Of 
course he must have used many short cuts 
across the country of wliich we were 
ignorant ; nevertheless it was quite a feat, 
for the distance traveled by us was about 
1 10 miles. 

From Carillo Cajon, where our last 
camp had been, to the westward and 
southwestward the scenery steadily be- 
comes grander and more mountainous ; 



IN THE SIERRA MADRE RANGE. 251 

until the Grand Barranca of the Urique 
is reached it fully equals the Grand Canon 
of the Colorado at any point on its course. 
Long before, indeed, on our southward 
march beautiful vistas break to the right 
and the left, and especially to the east. 
About five o'clock one afternoon, just as 
we were emerging from a dense forest of 
high pines, and little thinking of seeing 
stupendous scenery, we suddenly came 
to the very edge of a cliff fully looo 
feet high, and from which we could look 
down 4000 to 5000 feet on as grand a 
scene of massive crags, sculptured rock, 
and broken barrancas as the eye ever 
rested on. It was already late in the 
afternoon, so I determined to remain 
over a day at this point and devote it 
to camera and canon. This camp on the 
picturesque brink of the Grand Bar- 



252 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

ranca I called Camp Diaz, after Mexico's 
president. 

The Grand Barranca of the Urique is 
one of the most massive pieces of nature's 
architecture that the world affords. It is 
quite similar in some respects to the 
Grand Canon of the Colorado, and this 
is the nearest to which I can compare it 
in the United States. The latter, erand 
as the scenery undoubtedly is, soon tires 
by its monotonous aspect of perpendicular 
walls in traveling any distance, while the 
Grand Barranca could be followed as far 
as it deserves the name of "grand" and 
every view and every vista would have 
some startling and attractive change to 
please the eye. It is a "cross" between 
the Grand Canon of the Colorado and 
the Yosemite Valley — if we can imagine 
such scenery after seeing both. Were 



IX THE SIERRA MADRE RANGE 255 

the Urique River navigable, fortunes 
could easily be made by transportation 
lines carrying tourists to and fro, pro- 
vided even only one terminus connected 
with some well-established line of travel. 
But unfortunately it is not navigable, no 
amount of money could make it so, and 
all tourists or travelers who are afraid of 
a little work or roughing it will miss one 
of the most magnificent paroramas. It is 
simply impossible to crowd into a pen- 
and-ink sketch or a photograph any ade- 
quate views of this stupendous mountain 
scenery. It is rather a field for an artist, 
who will put the product of his palette 
and brush on heroic-sized canvas, and 
make one of the masterpieces of the 
world. The heart of the Andes or the 
crests of the Himalayas contain no more 
sublime scenery than the wild, almost 



256 CAVE AND CUFF DWELLERS. 

unknown fastnesses of the Sierra Madres 
of Mexico. 

From the diffs we were on, amonor the 
pines and cedars, we could look far down 
into the valley of the Urique with our 
field glasses and see the great pitahaya 
cactus, a product of the tropical climes. 
In between were the oaks and other prod- 
ucts of temperate climates, showing us 
in a huge panorama nearly all the plant 
life from the equator to the poles. We 
sat on the bold, beetling cliffs, and could 
drink ice w^ater from the clear mountain 
springs that threw themselves in silvery 
cascades below, and view the river far 
down in the valley, a perpendicular mile 
below us, the waters of which were so 
warm that we knew we could bathe in 
them with comfort. Away off across the 
great canon were lights, as evening fell, 



IN THE SIERRA MADRE RANGE. 257 

beaming from the caves of the cHff dwell- 
ers on the perpendicular side of the 
mountain. Truly it was a strange, wild 

sight. 

One of the lights that was " raised," as 
the sailors would say, in the evening, was 
in what seemed to be a perpendicular 
cliff on the opposite side of the mighty 
barranca, as near as we could make out 
in the gloom of the falling night. Its 
position was located, and, surely enough, 
on the next day our conjectures were 
•verified, for we could see a few dim 
dottings showing caves, while to the 
main one led up a steep talus of ddbris 
that tapered to a point just in front of 
the entrance. Strangest of all, but a 
little way down the side of this very 
steep talus, so very steep that one would 
have had much difficulty in ascending 



258 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

unless there were brush to assist in climb- 
ing, we could easily make out, with the 
help of our glasses, that corn had been 
planted by these strange people. It 
seemed as if the tops of the dwarf plants 
were just up to the roots of the next row 
of corn above them, if they can really be 
said to have been planted in rows at all 

Much as I would have liked to visit the 
place, the condition of my mules and the 
state of my provisions made it dearly out 
of the question; moreover, I was in- 
formed that better chances to see cliff 
dwellers would present themselves before 
long, which statement, fortunately, was 
soon verified. Not far from Camp Diaz 
was a place where we could have tied our 
braided horsehair lariats together and 
let a person down one hundred to two 
hundred feet into the tops of some tall 



IN THE SIERRA MADRE RANGE. 259 

pine trees, and from there gain the first 
incline, which, though dizzily steep, I 
think would have led, by a little Alpine 




INTERIOR OF A CLIFF DWELLER'S HOME, SEVENTY-FIVE 
FEET ABOVE THE WATER. 



engineering, into the bottom of the big 
barranca four or five thousand feet below, 
and thence an ascent could be made to 
the caves of the cliff dwellers. But there 



26o CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

were other and more potent considera- 
tions, which I have given, that prevented 
our attempting this acrobatic performance 
with the cliffs and crags as spectators. 
We might say that we were now out of 
the land of the living cave dwellers and 
in the land of the living cliff dwellers, 
although the latter live in caves in the 
cliffs. But I make the distinction be- 
tween the two, of caves on the level of the 
ground in the valleys or the sides of 
mountains, and the caves in cliffs or walls. 
The latter are reached by notched sticks 
used as ladders, or, as I saw in a few 
cases, by natural steps in the strata of 
alternate hard and soft rock, and up 
which nothing but a monkey or a Sierra 
Madre cliff dweller could ascend. Many 
of these cliff houses in the caves and 
great indentations are one hundred to 



IN THE SIERRA MADRE RANGE. 263 

two hundred feet above the water of some 
mountain stream, over which they hang 
Hke swallows' nests. Truly they are a 
most wonderful and interesting people, 
well worth a large volume or two to de- 
scribe all that is singular and different in 
them from other people, savage or civilized. 
One of the most distinguishing charac- 
teristics of the Sierra Madre range, and 
one that will attract widespread admira- 
tion in the near future when this country 
is better known, is its wonderful rock 
sculpture. I do not think I exaggerate 
in saying that I passed hundreds of iso- 
lated sculptured rocks in one day. All 
sketches fail to give an idea of these 
beautiful formations. They must be 
seen to afford a conception of their 
beauty and grotesqueness. Undoubtedly 
they outrank all other ranges of North 



264 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

America and, as far as I can learn, of the 
whole world. Even the Garden of the 
Gods in Colorado is flat in comparison 
with some of the many miles of glorious 
rock formations in these grand old moun- 
tains. The trail from Camp Diaz to our 
fifth camp in the Arroyo de los Angelitos 
along the western side of the Grand 
Barranca of the Urique, was as pictur- 
esque as the most poetical imagination 
could conceive. The trail wound up and 
down the steep arroyos and along the 
edge of the high cliffs, giving views of 
unsurpassed beauty and grandeur. That 
night we slept for the last time under the 
somber pines and listened to the whip- 
poor-wills, for the next night we had 
descended seven thousand feet, and were 
among the oranges and palms, the 
paroquets and humming birds. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

IN SOUTHWESTERN CHIHUAHUA DOWN 

THE URIQUE BARRANCA FROM PINE TO 

PALM URIQUE AND ITS MINES. 

AS this was to be a most important day 
•^ ^ our small party on the crest of one of 
the hiofh sierras was astir earlier than usual. 
Our camp had been made in a little glen 
between two peaks, alongside one of the 
numerous clear, cold streams that wind in 
and about through all these mountains, 
and furnish the loveliest and most 
picturesque spots imaginable for camping. 
Francisco, my chief packer, a bright, 
good-natured Mexican, was off long be- 
fore sunrise, scouring the ridges and the 
265 



266 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

gulches for the mules, as these animals 
often wander miles away at night, and in 
the morning all the available people in 
camp are turned out to look for them. 
This search sometimes wears well into 
the day before these frisky beasts are 
brought in ; then some stray human 
member of the party has to be found, and 
when all this is accomplished it is nearly 
time to turn out the mules for another 
feed. On this particular morning fortune 
favored us, however, and soon our 
dejected-looking beasts were tied in line 
with the lariats, while we sat on the 
ground a short distance from them, each 
with a tin plate in our laps and a tin cup- 
ful of coffee in our hands. The night 
before an Indian had arrived at our 
camp, sent out from Urique by our 
Mexican friend, with roasted chickens and 



IN SOUTHWESTERN CHIHUAHUA. 267 

fresh eggs. The chickens had vanished 
on the evening of their arrival, but the 
eggs furnished us a royal breakfast with 
tlie usual bill of fare, bacon and coffee. 
An early morning in the Sierra Madres, 
even in midsummer, will make the teeth 
chatter. The only comfort one can get, 
after piling on heavy coats, is to pass the 
time in revolving about the camp fire just 
out of reach of the smoke till breakfast is 
ready. Any attempt at washing is sure 
to be a failure, for the water is as cold as 
ice and the fingers refuse to work in the 
frosty air ; so it is generally about mid- 
day before dirt and the traveler cease to 
be companions. After we had thawed 
out with the hot coffee, and all the packs 
had been strapped on the mules, the 
animals were started ahead, with Fran- 
cisco's assistant, a muscular Indian, run- 



268 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

ning after them ; then the saddles were 
placecj on our worn-out beasts, and off 
w^e went w^ith Hght hearts, for this day's 
ride was to take us to the large mining 
village of Urique, buried away in the 
depths of the Urique Barranca. We had 
been on the road about an hour, up hill 
and down dale, crossing- innumerable 
mountain streams, and skirting the edges 
of precipices from which we caught 
glimpses of the beautiful valleys thou- 
sands of feet below, wdien we rounded the 
corner of an immense spur, climbed a 
high bald point of the mountain, and 
came suddenly to what appeared to be 
the end of land. We could now look out 
for miles into the great mining barranca, 
broken into innumerable crags and turrets, 
with ridges and banks of mountains piled 
high on every side, mountains of purple, 



IN SOUTHWESTERN CHIHUAHUA. 269 

red, yellow, and green, magnificent and 
fantastic, fading away into other bar- 
rancas to the right and left. Here we 
paused, seven thousand feet above the 
valley, and looked at the wonderful pano- 
rama spread before us, celebrated even 
among these grand old mountains — by 
the few who have penetrated their fast- 
nesses — as one of the most famous views 
and formidable descents in the whole 
range. The guides carefully examined 
all the packs and saddles, and every strap 
and rope was tightened and made secure. 
All were directed to remain in their 
saddles, as the descent was too steep and 
the way too dangerous for walking, the 
path or trail being covered with loose 
rolling stones. We had been told to 
give the mules their heads, and trust to 
their being perfectly sure-footed, for in 



2 70 CAVE A AW CUFF DWELLERS. 

that respect a Mexican mule is about as 
certain as a mountain goat. 

From " La Cumbra," or the crest of the 
Sierra Madres, we could look down in the 
valley of the Urique River, as I have said, 
somethinor over a vertical mile. As we 
stood among the pines we could see the 
plantations of oranges far below, one of 
which, called " La Naranja " — the Spanish 
for oranore — seemed almost under our 
feet ; in fact it was not farther away in 
horizontal measure than it was vertical, or 
about a mile in both. The Barranca of 
the Urique was much more open at this 
point than where we had first struck it at 
Camp Diaz, but it was, nevertheless, fully 
as grand and sublime in its might}' 
scenery, although of quite another kind. 
The enormous buttresses, almost spurs of 
mountains, that stood out along the 



DOWN THE URIQUE BARRANCA. zjl 

cafion-like sides of the former, with their 
bristHng, perpendicular fronts of thou- 
sands of feet in height, were now rounded 
off along the ridges with their vertical 
descents, and only their sides were 
straight up and down. In fact it was 
down these steep ridges that we must 
make our descent by zigzag trails that 
gave us a grade on which a mule could 
stand. Every time we came to the side 
of a ridge the trail hung over a precipice 
with a sickening dizziness to the rider 
until the mule could make the turn and 
get back on the descending trail. Occa- 
sionally it was necessary to leave one 
ridge for another far away that gave a 
better grade, and then we might have to 
skirt some cumbra, or crest, with walls 
practically vertical on either side, where, 
if we ever started to fall, we could guar- 



272 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

antee ourselves one thousand five hundred 
to two thousand feet of plain sailing. 

On the trail from Batopilas to Parral is 
the "La Infinitad" of the Mexican 
miners (the Infinity), where the trail, not 
over half a foot wide, looks down a sheer 
vertical twenty-six hundred feet. 

Presently the pines begin to grow less 
numerous and to be interspersed with the 
many varieties of oak for which the 
Sierra Madres will one day be noted, the 
most conspicuous of which is the cnci7io 
roblcs, or everlasting oak, a beautiful tree 
with enormous leaves of a bright green 
color. The oaks increase in numbers as 
we descend, and the pines soon disappear ; 
for we are getting out of the country of 
cold nights, which the conifers love so 
much. Presently a thorny mesquite is 
seen, and in half an hour we have traveled 



FROM PINE TO PALM. 273 

from Montana to Texas, in a climatic 
way. On the cumbra we jumped off 
from our mules and ran along by the half 
hour in the cool, fresh mountain air. 
Now five minutes brings out our hand- 
kerchiefs to wipe our perspiring brows. 
The northern cactus will soon mingle 
with the mesquite, and then the great 
pitahaya tells us we are on the verge of 
the tropics, while each tree in the orange 
orchard just below us can be made out, 
and after a few more turns on the twist- 
ing trails, even the 3'ellow oranges on the 
bright green trees become distinct. 
Another half hour and we are on the 
level, while not that length of time has 
been added before palms are over our 
head, and the heat is almost unbearable 
to those who have been for weeks on the 
high mountain tops of the cool sierras. 



2 74 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

In a little over four hours we dropped 
from the land of the pine to the land of 
the palm, and this too on mule-back, a 
feat that could be performed in few coun- 
tries outside of Mexico. We were now 
out of the land of wild forests and wild 
men, back again among Mexican civili- 
zation, but of a kind almost unknown to 
the outside world, although one of the 
richest minino- districts and one of the 
oldest points of colonization on the North 
American continent. 

Our path was now lined with lovely, 
flowering, thorny shrubs, that stretched 
out and tried to scratch us, and often 
succeeded as we passed by. When we 
reached the little plateau of the first 
orange grove we rested awhile, and from 
here could look back to the cool place we 
had left but four short hours before. 




FROM ORANGE PLANTATION TO CUMBRA, OR CREST OF MOUN- 
TAIN, SIX THOUSAND FEET. LOOKING BACKWARD. 



FROM PINE TO PALM. 277 

The way down from this resting place 
seemed steeper and longer than the first 
half of the journey ; the heat became in- 
tense, the air throbbinor and shimmerino- 
in the brilliant sunshine. Gayly colored 
paroquets and strange tropical birds went 
flitting past us and filled the air with 
their noisy calls and cries. The trail, 
however, had a persistent, unaccountable 
Indian method of keeping away from ail 
shade, and wound among the thickest 
masses of thorny shrubs, which com- 
pelled us constantly to keep an eye on 
them, or be reminded in a manner more 
painful than pleasant. These, and the 
intense heat, made me long for tlie 
mountain life again. Although we had 
dropped from the crest of the range and 
land of pines to the land of palms, seven 
thousand feet, still we had many miles to 



278 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

wind up the great tropical barranca be- 
fore we would reach the village. 

One of the most dangerous places on 
the entire trail, about six hundred feet 
above the river, was where the mountain 
had apparently caved in on a sharp curve. 
This cave-in was directly under the trail, 
and here it crossed it with an abrupt turn 
around the point of the mountain. A 
small torrent had cut its way down at 
this point, and goats and other animals, 
when grazing on the steep slope above, 
had loosened quantities of stones and 
earth, which had fallen and built out a sort 
of ledge or shelf at the same point. This 
shelf projected over the great curve in 
the hill, and on approaching this place it 
looked as if a mule must either walk off 
with his fore feet or let his hind ones 
drop over the cliff in making the turn. 



FROM PINE TO PALM. 279 

Of course the trail was as narrow as 
possible for a trail to be and allow an 
animal to cling to it. 

Through the kindness of Don Augus- 
tin Becerra there was sent out from 
Urique to the orange plantation a very 
large mule for my personal comfort. 
This animal was of the pinto variety and 
a fine traveler. After my desperate en- 
counters with '' Old Steamboat " it was 
positive luxury to ride him. He had 
some faults, however ; he was fresh and 
fast, so kept well in advance of the rest 
of the train. When we neared this par- 
ticularly dangerous place my mule took up 
a gentle trot and went pounding around 
the curve in a way that almost turned my 
hair gray, and I know we all breathed 
more freely after getting away from the 
perilous spot. 



28o CAl'E AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

The Mexican town of Urique, number- 
ing some three thousand people, was first 
estabHshed in 1612, years before the first 
pilgrim landed on Plymouth Rock, and 
yet it is as unknown as though in the 
interior of Africa. That living cave and 
clii^ dwellers should be found but a little 
way off from the rough and even dan- 
gerous trail that leads to the secluded 
town which no one troubled himself to 
report to the world outside, shows what a 
wonderful isolation can exist and still be 
called civilization. The only way out of 
and into the town was on the back of the 
melancholy mule, and an old resident told 
me he believed that three-fourths of the 
people had never seen a wagon, not even 
the wooden carts of the Mexicans that so 
remind one of scriptural times ; certainly 
no waeon or cart was ever hauled through 

o 



URIQUE AND ITS MINES. 283 

the streets of Urique. In this deep bar- 
ranca there is just room enough for the 
Urique River (a beautiful stream), and 
alongside of it, straggling out for a couple 
of miles or more, a row of houses hug- 
ging the banks of the stream, then a nar- 
row street and a similar row of houses 
crowded up on the slope of the moun- 
tain. Back of this rise abruptly the steep, 
broken crests of the Sierra Madres. On 
the opposite side of the river there is 
only room now and then for a chance 
house that clings to the steep sides of 
the hills or burrows into them. 

We rode with a great clatter up the 
single street lying white and still in the 
noonday sun, and had we not known that 
preparations had been made for us — as 
our arrival was anticipated by Don 
Augustin Becerra — we might have mis- 



284 CAVK AXD CUFF DWELLERS. 

taken the place for a deserted village. 
After riding a mile through the street we 
reached a little plaza about twenty-five 
feet square, where the mountains receded 
and made room for this level little patch 
of ground. Here one of the great 
wooden doors of the apparently deserted 
houses opened and our host came forth, 
followed by a number of others. By the 
time the whole party reached the plaza 
there were one or two hundred Mexicans 
congregated to welcome us and see us 
alio-ht. As there were no accommoda- 
tions of any sort in the town for trav- 
elers, Don Aiigustin Becerra, with the 
graceful courtesy of a Mexican gentle- 
man, had moved out of his own home 
and literally placed his whole house and 
all it contained at our disposal ; and this 
was done as though it were the most com- 



URIQUE AXD ITS MINES. 287 

monplace thing in the world, and without 
the least sign of ostentatious politeness. 
I doubt very much whether any American 
under the same circumstances would have 
done as much. His father, Don Buena- 
ventura Becerra, lived here also, and both 
united in showerino^ on us the most ac- 
ceptable acts of hospitality during our 
whole stay ; and these were doubly wel- 
come, coming as they did in such a spon- 
taneous and wholly unexpected manner. 

Urique is most interesting in that vast 
and substantial mineral wealth of which 
the little town is practically the center. 
The discovery of the rich district of 
Urique is to be attributed, so I am told, 
to the " adelantados " or "conquista- 
dores," Spanish names equivalent to 
" adventurers," and then given to the 
commanders of expeditions organized but 



288 CAFE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

a short time after the conquest to explore 
the country and extend the domains of the 
Spanish crown. Directly overlooking this 
beautiful little mountain town is the Rosa- 
rio mine, one of the principal mines of the 
district. Its ore runs from two hundred 
to two thousand dollars to the ton. In 
fact only the richest ores of any mine can 
be worked in the Central Sierra Madres, 
where everything is carried for hundreds 
of miles on mule-back at rates that would 
make a freight agent's mouth water. Salt 
for chlorination works, that we get for 
five to ten dollars a ton where there are 
railways, here costs from one hundred to 
one hundred and twenty-five dollars a ton, 
and even much more during the rainy 
season of about three months, when all 
the streams are swollen and the dizzy 
mountain trails are dangerous in the ex- 



URIQUE AND ITS MINES. 291 

treme. This rainy season in Northern 
Mexico lasts from about the first or mid- 
dle of June until the middle of Septem- 
ber. It is against such enormous odds 
that man has to battle with Nature in 
this secluded part of the earth in order 
to get at her wealth that is otherwise so 
lavishly strewn around. After one has 
passed ten or twelve days on the roughest 
of mountain trails in order to reach this 
point, and reflects that the discoverers 
must have been without even this poor 
aid to progress, one's respect for the old 
Spanish explorers of the seventeenth cen- 
tury is sure to be heartily accorded. They 
were undoubtedly a much hardier, more 
daring, persistent, and intrepid class of 
people than those who struck the Atlantic 
shores of our own country. But, great 
ghost of Cortes, how things have changed ! 



292 C.-IVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

It seems as if the will and energy of 
three centuries had been crowded into as 
many years, and then allowed to stand 
still, like a watch that loses its balance 
and spins off the twenty-four hours in 
nearly as many seconds. 

And right here I would refer to the 
frequent discussion of writers on Mexico 
as to whether Mexicans are opposed to 
the introduction of foreign labor and capi- 
tal to develop their country. All around 
the town of Urique are to be found 
mines of gold and silver either operated 
or about to be operated by Americans, 
English, Germans, and other foreigners ; 
while many other enterprises are starting 
toward this rich country opened by the 
Spanish before a white man had crossed 
the AUeghenies. I was therefore in a fair 
position to hear what their descendants 



URIQUE AND ITS MINES. 293 

had to say, and in giving it utterance 
let me compare them with our own 
countrymen. Individually the Mexican is 
never so bitter against foreigners as the 
American, although the latter nation is 
much more an aggregation of foreigners 
than the former, and of much later date 
from other countries. I often heard quite 
caustic comparisons from sensible Mexi- 
cans as to foreign methods of mining, 
railroading, etc., which I think were some- 
times exaggerative, and they even ex- 
pressed opposition to their coming in at 
all, but never in a manner so pronounced 
as with us. 

The whole of the rich Urique district, 
formerly an old Spanish granf many 
square miles in extent, was granted the 
Becerra family of three brothers by the 
Mexican Government Their wealth is 



294 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

reputed to be many millions, and this 
we could readily believe while passing 
through a portion of their vast posses- 
sions. There are now in the Urique 
district a dozen bonanza mines worked 
by the old Spanish system, which would 
yield enormous revenues if there were 
any method by which the ore could be 
transported at reasonable rates. From 
almost any point on the one street of the 
town you could look up the steep moun- 
tain sides and see three or four of these 
old Spanish mines. The method of 
working them was wholly on the same 
plan as that adopted a hundred years 
before, even the machinery being of the 
most primitive type. 

That night I took a swim in the Urique 
River and found the water as warm as 
fresh milk, although the water I had used 



URIQUE AND ITS MINES. 295 

in the morning from some of its small 
tributaries on the cumbra was as cold as 
ice. 

The post office in the little town was 
a most curiously primitive affair, being 
merely an awning of branches held up 
against a tree by a post in the ground. 
Under this an old man was seated on 
a chair ; we saw nothing here to indicate 
a post office, but were assured this was 
the spot to deposit our letters. The man 
regarded me with surprise and distrust, 
and the sight of the three or four letters 
I wished to mail drew a large crowd. 
The old man could not read, and I told 
him where the letters were to go ; then, 
after a great deal of jabbering among the 
crowd regarding the amount of postage, 
which I fortunately knew and told him, 
the letters were mailed by being deposited 



296 CAVE AND CUFF DWELLERS. 

in an empty cigar box at his side, to be 
handed to the Indian mail carrier on his 
next trip out of Urique. 

Our stay was unexpectedly prolonged 
by the illness of one of the party. It 
was the warmest season of the year in the 
deep tropical barranca, and the change 
from the cool mountain air of the high 
sierras was extremely trying to all. We 
found it was necessary to make an effort 
to bestir ourselves as far as sightseeing 
was concerned, but we dared to venture 
out only after sunset from our comfort- 
able quarters in the thick adobe building. 
There was no twilight in the great canon. 
Almost as soon as the sun disappeared 
behind the steep mountains darkness 
came ; but the moonlight nights were 
simply glorious, transforming the tropical 
valley into a perfect fairyland ; even the 



URIQUE AND ITS MINES. 297 

homely adobe houses were beautiful, and 
the most commonplace Mexican, in his 
great sombrero with a serape thrown 
gracefully over his shoulders, added a 
picturesque touch to the scene. Every 
available level spot of land in the valley 
had been turned by the owners into an 
orange grove or a ranch on which to raise 
fruits and vegetables for consumption by 
their families ; and, as all the edible veo-e- 
.tation of nearly every clime o-rew there, 
their tables were always abundantly 
supplied. 

In wandering along the river bank 
I noticed one very effective way the 
natives had to protect their gardens from 
the intrusions of the small boy or even 
smaller animals. On the top of a com- 
mon adobe fence they planted a row of 
the cholla cactus, the most prickly of all 



298 CAJ'£ AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

that great family of needles. Even the 
agile cat could not get over nor around 
this formidable fence. 

We made two ineffectual efforts to get 
away from Urique before we finally suc- 
ceeded. In the first instance the packers 
did not arrive with the mules until noon, 
thinking by this ruse they would be able 
to camp in the valley instead of on the 
mountain, for they much prefer the trop- 
ical heat to the chill of the high moun- 
tains. The next time they were promptly 
on hand, but one of the party was too ill 
to sit up. The third time fortune favored 
us, and, after bidding adieu to our hos- 
pitable friends, we started for the famous 
Cerro Colorado mine, said to be the rich- 
est gold mine in all this part of Mexico. 
We followed the narrow mule trail that 
wound along the brawling river, hemmed 



URIQUE AND ITS MINES. 299 

in on either side by mountains towering 
three, four, and five thousand feet above 
us, and were well up the canon before the 
first rays of the sun could reach us over 
the mountain tops. All along the trail the 
river was lined with beautiful flowering 
shrubs of every conceivable shade and 
color. Flitting around among them were 
brilliantly colored paroquets and many 
other birds with gay plumage. That morn- 
ing's ride of ten or twelve miles up the 
caiion, sheltered as we were from the 
fierce rays of the sun — which emphasized 
and reflected the many-colored rocks of 
the mountains that were carved and sculp- 
tured into all beautiful and fantastic 
shapes — was one of such rare beauty and 
perfection that even the most graphic 
pen would despair of doing justice to the 
subject. About noon we crossed a small 



300 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

branch of the Urique River, for we had 
turned off from the main canon into 
a smaller one, and then started up the 
steep mountain side. Up the weary 
mules scrambled and climbed for six long 
hours, resting now and then while we 
looked backward and downward at the 
land of the tropics, all wayside signs of 
which were fast disappearing. Just before 
leaving the Urique River we came to a 
native tannery, which was about as prim- 
itive an affair as any we saw in the whole 
Sierra Madres. For some two hundred 
yards along the wide river its bottom was 
white with outstretched hides held there 
by heavy stones on the upstream corners, 
and these hides were kept there for 
weeks to rid them of their hair. Of 
course we tasted but little of the water 
below that point. On enormous bent 



URIQUE AND ITS MINES. 303 

beams at the lower end was found a num- 
ber of hides stretched, and naked men 
scrapinor them with sharpened stones. 
Despite the style of work, the leather 
they make is remarkably soft and pliable. 
An hour or two before our evening camp 
was made we were once more travel- 
ing along underneath the shade of the 
great somber pines, and the air seemed 
cold and unpleasant after our late tropical 
experience. As we had no tent with us, 
we simply spread our beds upon the soft 
pine needles and slept with the stars 
shining in our faces. At the first streak 
of daylight we were eating our breakfast, 
and shortly after were off over the vel- 
vety trail that led up the peaks and across 
many small barrancas toward the deep 
gorge in which was the celebrated Cerro 
Colorado mine. 



304 CAV£ AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

All this portion of the Sierra Madres 
is unsurpassed for magnificent and thrill- 
ing views over dizzy mountain trails. 
At many places one could look off into 
infinity from a ledge not over a foot 
and a half in width on which the mules 
must walk. Occasionally a steep wall of 
rock rises many hundreds of feet on one 
side and along this the mule will carefully 
scrape. The descent into Cerro Colorado 
was the most continuous steep I ever 
saw. Almost before we knew it we were 
in the tropics again, and that by an in- 
cline where, in a dozen places, the uphill 
rider on one zigzag could, without taking 
his foot out of the stirrup, kick off the 
hat of one below him on the other course 
as he passed. 

Cerro Colorado is reputed to be the 
largest gold mine in the world, and was 



URIQUE AND ITS MINES. 307 

discovered as recently as 1888. That it 
should have remained so long unknown to 
any prospector in such a rich silver-min- 
ing district is one of the morsels of min- 
ing history, even a far greater mystery to 
me th^n that the existence of living cave 
and cliff dwellers on the rough moun- 
tain trails leading thereto should have 
been kept so long quiet. Cliff dwellers 
or angels in the air above them, or cave 
dwellers or demons in the earth under 
them would have attracted but little 
attention from a seeker of precious met- 
als beyond the momentary astonishment 
at their sight. 

The Cerro Colorado mine is an im- 
mense buttress or spur from the flank of 
the Sierra Madres, the whole spur show- 
ing signs of gold, not in any distinct 
vein, but in great masses distributed here 



3o8 CA VE AND CLIFF D WELLERS. 

and there through the mountain, a sort 
of "pocket" system, as miners would 
say. This great buttress or spur is 
1800 meters (something over a mile) 
in length, 1200 meters in breadth, and 
500 meters in height, and runs from 
$1 to $3300 a ton, as would be expected 
in the pocket system of deposits. 
Small deposits have been found of one 
hundred weight or so, however, that 
would run enormously — over $100,000 
to the ton. The gold is not wholly 
in pockets, for it is found distrib- 
uted in all parts of the great red hill, at 
least in the minimum of one dollar per 
ton. It requires eight mines to cover 
the tract properly. Enormous works 
were being put in to develop the prop- 
erty, and in a few years it will be 
known whether this is the largest 



URIQUE AND ITS MINES. 309 

gold mine in the world or not. It 
is the property of the Becerra brothers, 
and when I visited it Don Jos^ Maria 
Becerra was at the mine and spared 
no pains to make my stay pleasant. 
He was then engaged in placing the 
most improved machinery and con- 
structing enormous works for water 
power, etc. He brought out and laid 
on a chair four great lumps of gold, 
of about the value of seventy thou- 
sand dollars, that had just been run 
out by the Mexican arastra, for they 
were still using the ancient method of 
mining, awaiting the arrival of the new 
machinery. Our host was preparing 
to start for London and Paris on business 
connected with his mine, and when we 
again heard of him it was the sad news 
of his death in London. This was not 



3IO CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

only a severe loss to his family, but a 
great blow to that portion of the coun- - 
try where his progressive energy had 
done so much to further its develop- 
ment. 



CHAPTER IX. 

SOUTHWESTERN CHIHUAHUA DESCRIPTION 

OF ONE OF THE RICHEST SILVER REGIONS 

OF THE WORLD MINERAL WEALTH OF 

THE SIERRA MADRES THE BATOPILAS 

DISTRICT. 

\ FTER leaving Cerro Colorado, with 
its undeveloped possibilities, the 
trail leads southwestward through the 
broken barrancas toward Batopilas. This 
portion of the trail has been so improved 
by the energetic mine owners, and was so 
broad and smooth, that our mules could 
often take up a trot, which seemed doubly 
fast after our laborious plodding through 
the rough, unbroken portion over which 
we had passed. This trail had been built 



311 



312 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

along some of the steepest cliffs and most 
rugged mountain sides, and must have 
been a work of great expense, for after 
every rainy season, lasting from June till 
September, these are badly washed out 
and require continuous repairs. The 
usual Mexican method is to abandon a 
badly washed trail and strike out in a new 
direction. Thus one finds all sorts of 
paths in the mountains, and it is necessary 
to have a good guide who knows the way 
thoroughly, or bring up suddenly on the 
washed-out ledge of an unused trail and 
then retrace your steps to its junction 
with another. Long before we reached 
Batopilas we came upon some of the 
massive work being constructed at that 
point, and were in a measure prepared for 
the energetic American activity, but not 
for the castle-like structure, the hacienda 



SOUTHWESTERN CHIHUAHUA. S^S 

of San Miguel and San Antonio, as the 
home of ex-Governor Shepherd, the 
part owner and superintendent of those 
famous mines is called. Entering through 
a massive stone archway, we passed by 
some of the principal offices within the 
inclosure, and then on to the residence 
portion of the great conglomeration of 
buildings. Here our welcome was of the 
heartiest description, and everything pos- 
sible was done for our comfort and pleas- 
ure. The great buildings were lighted 
by electricity and furnished with all mod- 
ern conveniences, including hot and cold 
water, steam baths, and, an unusual lux- 
ury, an immense swimming pool, formed 
by a slight deflection of a portion of 
the Batopilas River. The many comforts 
of this place made us loath to leave it for 
the mountain trail. 



314 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

I shall try and give my readers some 
slight idea of the wealth of this portion 
of a country so famous in early Spanish 
conquest. In those great, broken barran- 
cas, leading out to the westward from the 
heart of the Central Sierra Madres, I 
found myself in the richest mineral dis- 
trict of America, and probably the richest 
in the world. The fact that this is not 
generally known (and, to tell the truth, 
bnt very little has ever been published in 
the English language about so rich a dis- 
trict, and that little is very old) would 
make it easy to write a book on this 
region alone, and still leave a great deal 
unsaid. One of the late cyclopedias 
says of Mexican mines, " Almost one-half 
of the total yield [of silver] is derived 
from the three great mining districts 
in Guanajuato, Zacatecas, and Catorce." 



RICH SILVER REGIONS. 315 

Like most cyclopedias, this one was a 
little late in its information when printed, 
althouQfh it had an inkling- of the truth in 
saying : " The State of Sinaloa is said 
to be literally covered with silver mines. 
Scientific explorers who visited the 
Sinaloa mines in 1872 reported that those 
on the Pacific slope would be the great 
source of the supply of silver for the next 
century." The fact is that the center of 
the greatest source of supply has moved 
even north of Sinaloa, to about the 
boundary line between the States of Chi- 
huahua and Sonora, and about one-third 
of the way from its southern end. Tak- 
ing either Batopilas or Urique as a base, 
and with a radius of 180 or 200 miles, 
that is, a diameter of 400 miles on them 
as a center, there is no doubt that the 
resulting circle will include the richest 



3l6 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

mining district in America, and probably 
in the world, both in a present and pro- 
spective sense. From within that circle 
comes a little over one-fourth the bullion 
of the whole of Mexico, although this 
area is insignificant compared with all the 
territory of that celebrated republic. 

In 1864 a report of the mines of Mex- 
ico was expressly made for Napoleon III. 
by Dr. Roger Dubois, the French consul. 
He said as follows of those of Western 
Chihuahua : " Of all the States of the 
Mexican Republic, Chihuahua is, without 
contradiction, the richest in minerals, and 
we count no less than three thousand dif- 
ferent leads, the greater part of which 
are silver." Probably three or four times 
that number could be added to Dr. Du- 
bois' estimate of just a quarter of a cen- 
tury ago to bring it up to the present 



SIERRA MADRES' MINERAL WEALTH. 317 

date, all of the new mines beinor in the 
Sierra Madres, where not one in a hun- 
dred can be worked unless of fabulous 
richness. One of the new railways pro- 
jected into this part of Mexico made 
a most thorough examination of this 
mining belt to see what could be de- 
pended on for freight, and their chief 
engineer told me that no less than two 
thousand mines of silver that do not pay 
now could be made to do so by the cheap 
transportation of a railway. If one will 
reflect that there are now in the whole 
of Mexico but 1247 mines being worked 
(gold, silver, copper, lead, tin, and cinna- 
bar), it is easy to see that my statement 
of this being the richest mining district 
of Mexico, and therefore of America, 
will admit of no doubt, and especially in 
a prospective sense. Already, in antici- 



3l8 CAl^£ AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

pation of a railway, many large companies 
are prospecting their concessions, while 
the individual miner is also to be found 
with pickax, pan, and shovel on his back, 
making for this El Dorado, so old in 
many ways, and yet so very new. 

Mr. H. H. Porter, the prospecting 
engineer of the Batopilas Mining Com- 
pany, told me, and showed me the vari- 
ous specimens to verify his statement, 
that in one little area three hundred yards 
square, there were found twelve veins of 
silver running from three dollars to sev- 
enty-eight dollars to the ton. The reader 
unacquainted with mining may under- 
stand this by my saying that any silver 
mine of over twenty dollars to the ton is 
a fortune to its owner if on or near a 
railway. There are over five hundred 
veins in the Batopilas concession of sixty- 



THE B A TO PI LAS DISTRICT. 319 

four square miles, and should any new 
railway running near by justify further 
research, it could probably be made five 
thousand without much trouble. 

The history of the big Batopilas Min- 
ing Company, about the center of the 
district I have spoken of, and which 
stands head and shoulders above all the 
surrounding mining companies, is a fair 
example of all in this part of the coun- 
try where my travels were cast. 

Batopilas, or Real de San Pedro de 
Batopilas, as it was originally named, is 
said to have been discovered in October, 
1632. Like Urique, its discovery is to be 
ascribed to the " adelantados " sent out 
shortly after the conquest to explore the 
country and enlarge the possessions of 
Spain. It is surmised that the rich min- 
eral finds made near the capital, and 



320 CAFE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

which subsequently extended far into the 
interior, led to the progress of the 
" adelantados " further north, and inspired 
the expedition into the Sierra Madres 
which gave rise to the discovery of Ba- 
topilas. Tradition has it that upon their 
descent to the river bottom the "adelan- 
tados" were struck by the luminous ap- 
pearance of the rocks, which were cov- 
ered in many parts by snowy flakes of 
native silver. Hence the name " Ne- 
vada," signifying " a fall of snow," which 
was applied to the first mine worked in 
the district. The news of the discovery 
spread far and wide, and, as the evidence 
of its great richness multiplied, it soon 
became one of the most famous mines of 
New Spain. The first miners of the new 
discovery made a magnificent present to 
the viceroy, composed entirely of large 



THE BATOPILAS DISTRICT. ' 321 

pieces of native silver, the richness of the 
ore being unprecedented. I have now 
in my possession ore from Batopilas 
that runs from six thousand to eight 
thousand dollars to the ton, and that 
looks like a mass of solid silver ten- 
penny nails imperfectly fused together; 
so I can readily see how the present of 
solid native silver could have been made. 
In 1790 a royal decree ordered the col- 
lection of all data for a history of New 
Spain, and a special commission of scien- 
tists was ordered by the viceroy and 
Royal Tribunal of Mines to report upon 
the Batopilas district. There is but one 
copy of the report extant, which I traced 
to the city of Chihuahua. The commis- 
sion states that the silver extracted from 
Batopilas in a few years amounted to fifty 
million dollars, not including that which 



32 2 CAF£ AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

was surreptitiously taken out to escape the 
heavy imposts levied by the crown, and 
which must have been enormous. The 
most famous period of "bonanza" for 
the Batopilas district was during the last 
fifty years of the eighteenth and the first 
years of the present century. During 
this time the famous mines of Pastrana, 
El Carmen, Arbitrios, and San Antonio 
were discovered, and yielded the 
fabulous returns which have been 
variously estimated at from sixty 
million to eighty million dollars. From 
the outset of the Mexican Revolu- 
tion in 1810 a period of decay set 
in, which reduced Batopilas greatly and 
almost caused its ruin. The many revo- 
lutions, together with the wonderful dis- 
coveries of very rich gold and silver 
mining districts adjoining this one, de- 



THE BATOPILAS DISTRICT. 323 

populated it to such a degree that it 
counted but ten resident famiHes in 1845. 
From this time the reaction which has 
made Batopilas the richest silver dis- 
trict in the world may be said to date. 
The old mines were again opened and 
new ones discovered. The measure of 
success did not compare with that attained 
in the time of the Spaniards, however, 
owing to the lesser energy displayed, but 
proved amply sufficient to repay the 
timid efforts of the native speculators. 

Not until the year 1862 did American 
enterprise direct its efforts in so promis- 
ing a direction. A purchase was effected 
by an American company, composed 
principally of gentlemen interested in 
Wells, Fargo & Co., whereby the prop- 
erty embracing the famous veins of San 
Antonio and El Carmen passed into 



324 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

their hands. They operated with great 
success in the face of many difficulties 
until the year 1879, when the property 
again changed hands, and was acquired 
by a stock company, which has held 
and worked it to the present day. The 
American companies in this, the richest 
mining district in the world, are : The 
Batopilas Mining Company, the Todos 
Santos Silver Mining Company, and the 
Santo Domingo Silver Mining Company. 
The Mexican mining companies are quite 
numerous, as may be supposed, but I 
shall not detail them, as it would require 
too much space. Many of them are very 
important, as the Urique and Cerro Col- 
orado companies. Altogether there are 
over a hundred in a greater or less de- 
gree of active operation in this rich dis- 
trict, all contained within a radius of four 



THE BATOPILAS DISTRICT. 325 

miles. Of these the Batopilas Mining 
Company owns and operates over sixty. 
It is without doubt one of the most im- 
portant American mining ventures in 
Mexico. It is also a mining company that 
has had great difficulties to contend with. 
Its isolation in the establishment of a 
business of such magnitude in the heart 
of the Sierra Madres in so short a number 
of years is an accomplishment suggestive 
of great energy. This company owns 
nearly all the famous old mines in this dis- 
trict which, in the times of the Spaniards, 
yielded those fabulous bonanzas that 
caused the astonishment of the world. 
It has had to repair the follies which, 
from a scientific standpoint, were com- 
mitted by several generations of in- 
expert and short-sighted Mexican 
mine owners. It has had to clear 



326 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

the old mines of immense masses of 
rock and dirt which had accumulated 
during many decades of abandonment, 
"gutting and scalping," as the miners 
say. Recently over one hundred miles 
of openings have been made. The 
most important is the great Porfirio 
Diaz tunnel, to be 3^ miles in 
length when completed — one of the long- 
est and most important mining tunnels in 
the world, cutting over sixty well-known 
veins at the river's level. No one can 
look at the great mills, the aque- 
duct of enormous masonry (eight or 
nine miles long, and that will 
take up all the water of the Batopi* 
las river), or the town of Batopilas (a most 
active place of six thousand people) 
without respecting the energy that has 
accomplished all this. The history of 



THE B A TOP I LAS DISTRICT. 3^7 

Batopilas is only the history of many 
other mining districts throughout this 
country, and the fortunes taken from 
these mines, and those still behind in 
them, seem unreal and bordering on 
romance. 

There is one mine near the city of 
Chihuahua, the Santa Eulalia, which in 
days gone by built the fine cathedral at 
that place at a cost of eight hundred 
thousand dollars. This was done by 
simply paying a tax of about twenty- 
five cents on every pound of silver 
mined, which was ample atonement for 
any or all sins that the owners could 
commit. 

From Batopilas, north or south, the 
mighty range of mountains lowers in 
height, while the big barrancas do not 
cut so deep into their flanks anywhere 



328 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

else as here, giving the finest Alpine 
scenery to be found in this part of the 
continent. 

Some of the outside facts regarding the 
mines are really more interesting than 
the mines themselves. The miners work 
in the hot interiors bare to the skin, ex- 
cept their sandals and a breechcloth. 
Even these have to be examined when 
they emerge from the mine after the 
work is over. The sandals are taken off 
and beaten together, while the breech- 
cloth is treated in the same manner if the 
examiner demands it. Of course the 
miners are usually known to the examiner, 
and his searches vary with the supposed 
honesty of the different workmen. In a 
mine where pure silver has been known 
to be cut out with cold chisels by the 
mule load, and sent direct to the retorts 



THE BATOPILAS DISTRICT. 329 

for smelting, the temptation was very- 
great to purloin a little with each depar- 
ture from the mine ; and accounts of the 
sly efforts of some of the thieves appear 
more like the yarns in detective stories 
than cold facts. Ventilating tubes, small 
as gas pipe and covered with wire gauze, 
have been used to transfer the metal from 
the interior to the exterior of the mine 
for quite long distances. Imitation kits 
of tools have been made of drills, ham- 
mers, etc., all of which were hollow and 
used for stuffing in stray bits of solid 
silver. Even candles and candle holders 
were made hollow and thus used for 
stealing. I could give a dozen other 
most singular means employed by these 
miners in their pilferlngs. 

The tunneling of the old Spaniards 
was very slow compared with that now 



33° CA VE AND CLIFF D WELLERS. 

done by machinery. In some places 
there were evidences that they had 
heated the stones by fire and had 
then thrown water thereon, shivering 
the front by sudden chilling, a method 
yet employed in Honduras and Guate- 
mala, according to an engineer at Bato- 
pilas who had recently arrived from those 
countries. 

One of the most singular things 
connected with prospecting in this par- 
ticular portion of the mountains is the 
means by which large deposits of silver 
near a tunnel can be located. If an 
iridescent, smoke-like appearance spreads 
over the rocks at any point of a new 
tunnel or drift at the end of a week or 
two, the engineers always drift for it and 
generally strike silver. This stain is 
called by them " silver smoke," and is 



THE BATOPILAS DISTRICT. 33 1 

said to be unknown in any other mines. 
I was given a half dozen theories in re- 
gard to it, mostly of a chemical character, 
but the mere fact that such a strange con- 
dition exists to help man pry into nature's 
secrets is more interesting than any ex- 
planation. 

From the garden of the hacienda, 
surrounded by banana and orange groves 
and all kinds of tropical plants and 
flowers, one can look up the steep sides 
of the mountains, which rise abruptly on 
both sides, to the oaks and pines beyond, 
and, while sitting on the veranda sipping 
ices or drinking cool and refreshing 
drinks, and vigorously using the fan, 
realize that only a mile above, on the 
cumbra or crest of the steep mountain, 
the ice water flows freely in the little 
mountain streams and the heaviest 



332 CAF£ AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

flannels only would be comforta- 
ble. 

My stay at Batopilas was somewhat 
prolonged in waiting for a party that was 
soon to descend with bullion to Chihua- 
hua. I had originally intended to continue 
my course toward the Pacific, but the hot 
weather, more severe in May and June 
than during July and August, owing to the 
rainy season tempering the latter, and the 
fact that I could find a more interesting 
trip through the Sierra Madres by another 
trail than that by which I had entered, 
determined me to turn my face eastward 
and keep on the high plateau with its 
grand equable climate. In leaving Ba- 
topilas the large pack train carrying the 
bullion was given two days' start, and we 
were to ride and join them after they had 
made the cumbra or crest of the moun- 



THE BATOPILAS DISTRICT. ZZ2> 

tains. This trail took me well to the 
southward of the one traversed on enter- 
ing the mountains, and gave me a new 
and interesting country. 

On the high mountain crest between 
Urique and Batopilas I had gained my 
furthest point west. The Sierra Madres 
break more abruptly on their westward 
slopes, and from the crest we could make 
out the great plains of Sinaloa and Sonora 
stretching far away toward the Gulf of 
California. The country to the west in 
Sonora and Northern Sinaloa is one of the 
most fertile in Mexico. The valleys of 
the Fuerte, the Mayo, and the Yaqui are 
as rich as any river valleys in North 
America, and perfectly susceptible, of 
sustaining a dense population, or will be 
when all the Indian troubles of that 
region are definitely settled. Most of the 



334 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

crops are of the kind, however, that need 
cheap transportation to compete with less 
favored districts in the markets of the 
world, and are now restricted in amount 
to what is necessary for a mere local 
consumption. Here wheat yields enor- 
mously to the acre, and the fields are 
so dense that it is next to impossible 
to wade through them. Cotton grows 
more luxuriantly than anywhere on 
the North American continent. Cotton 
is planted here oftentimes only once 
in many years, and large fields are seen 
four, five, and even seven years old, 
yielding two and three crops annually. 
In the same field can be seen plants in 
blossom, pods, and ripe cotton being 
picked. It will be one of the leading 
cotton districts of the world when a rail- 
way cuts through it so that the producer 



THE B A TOP I LAS DISTRICT. 335 

can have some show to compete with 
other districts. Corn is very prolific, 
coffee produces well, tobacco is of fine 
flavor, and oranges, guavas, bananas, and 




INDIAN WOMAN GRINDING CORN. 

plantains are plentiful and of rich flavor ; 
but transportation on a pack mule for lOO 
or 200 miles is too uncertain as to condi- 
tion of delivery, and too certain as to ex- 
orbitant price, to encourage their culti- 
vation beyond local needs of a limited 



33^ CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

amount The Fuerte (in Spanish mean- 
ing "strong") is a strong-flowing river 
with enough water — as its name would 
indicate — to irrigate both sides of its 
course for nine or ten miles in width. 
The Mayo is but little inferior, and the 
Yaqui is even greater. 

The Pacific ports of this fertile belt are 
Mazatlan, Guaymas, and Topolobampo. 
At the latter point an American colony 
was founded some years ago, of which 
the reading public heard considerable, 
not very favorable to that country as 
a colonization district, and with a great 
deal of aspersion thrown at the colonizers. 
There was so much crimination and re- 
crimination by the two sides that I do 
not believe anybody ever obtained a clear 
idea of how matters stood there. The 
fact is about this : A colony was put in 



THE BATOPILAS DISTRICT. 337 

a part of an extremely rich country with 
the ultimate expectation that a railway 
would be completed from that point to 
the Rio Grande and to Eastern connec- 







A CIVILIZED TARAHUMARI COOKING. 

tions. Had the railway been finished, 
every colonist with enough gray matter 
in his brain to know his way home would 
have made a competence at least, and 
probably a fortune. This is just as sure 
as that fortunes have elsewhere been 



33^ CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

made through the development by rail- 
ways of new, rich countries. But with its 
failure there was no halfway ground to 
stand on, so that in this instance there 
arose such an amount of misty accusa- 
tion and rejoinder that many people in 
an indefinite way laid all the blame on 
the country ; a most erroneous conclusion. 
When a railway is completed through 
this country there will be the usual 
amount of money made that such circum- 
stances justify, but only by those who 
have selected the right time for it. 

As I have already said, the main por- 
tion of the large pack train was started 
ahead to give it an opportunity to rest 
a little before attempting to climb the 
steep mountain trail, and, after reaching 
the cumbra, or crest, another breath- 
ing spell before starting on their long 



THE B A TOP I LAS DISTRICT. 339 

journey. It was now nearing the rainy 
season, and even if we made haste we 
would only just escape this unpleasant 
and rather dangerous time in the high 
sierras, for there the floods pour down 
and often carry out large portions of the 
trail on the steep and narrow mountain 
passes. Our pack train consisted, all 
told, of about seventy or eighty mules, 
twenty to thirty of them loaded with 
silver bricks for Chihuahua, the rest of 
the train being the pack and riding 
mules of the various drivers and attend- 
ants of the " conductor," as the principal 
personage in charge of the bullion is 
called. 

This person was an immense quadroon, 
a person of unusual executive ability in 
that position, and thoroughly trusted by 
the superintendent, ex-Governor Alex- 



340 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

ander Shepherd. He had under him a 
half dozen able assistants, all Mexicans, 
and was accompanied by three or four 
" valiantes," as they are called, men of 
renowned prowess, who have at least 
" killed their man," and who could be 
relied on to protect the train in case of 
attack by robbers. As this large caval- 
cade moved off up the narrow barranca 
or canon it presented a motley and pic- 
turesque appearance from its gayly 
dressed and heavily armed attendants, 
well mounted on their sturdy mules, to 
the Indian drivers, with only a blanket 
apiece for covering and a stout stick to 
help them over the ground. Even the 
most civilized of these Indians think 
nothing of such a walk, two or three 
hundred miles, resting every night as 
they do when in attendance on a large 




A GOATHERD S CACHE IN THE MOUNTAINS. 



THE BATOPILAS DISTRICT. 343 

pack train and sharing in the good food 
supplied them by the owner. Indeed it 
is really a treat to them. Among the 
Indian drivers were two or three who 
had never seen a railway, nor had they 
ever visited a city as large as Chihuahua, 
and they were looking forward with 
feverish anxiety to this great event of 
their lives. They had heard of the won- 
derful Mexicai." Central Railway and the 
great trains q- cars that moved so fast, 
but their minds seemed filled with unbe- 
lief until they could really take it in for 
themselves. The semi-civilized or civi- 
lized Tarahumari Indians are the best 
natured people imaginable, and there is 
nothing they are not willing or anxious 
to do for you if in your employ. They 
possess the same docile obedience and 
fondness that a doe exhibits for his 



344 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

master, and are constantly anticipat- ; 
ing little wants and looking for little \ 
favors they can do you, and this too ; 
without expecting any reward what- : 
ever. : 



CHAPTER X. 

SOUTHWESTERN CHIHUAHUA THE RETURN 

BY ANOTHER TRAIL THE CAf^ON OF 

THE CHURCHES AMONG THE CLIFF 

DWELLERS. 

A FTER bidding adieu to our hospita- 
■^ ^ ble host and the many friends at 
the great hacienda, we started quite late 
in the afternoon to ride about eight or 
nine miles up the Batopilas River to a 
station of the Batopilas Mining Com- 
pany called the Potrero. On either side 
the Batopilas lifts its banks from four to 
five and even to six thousand feet above 
the river bed, making a wonderfully beau- 
tiful panorama of rugged mountain scen- 
ery as you wind along, sometimes climb- 

345 



346 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

ing up a few hundred feet and then 
descending to the water's edge to cross 
at some favorable ford. For the canon 
through its entire length is very narrow, 
and in some places there is only room 
for the rushing river with the trail hug- 
ging the banks or finding a foothold for 
the mules on the steep, broken mountain 
side. I hardly know which looks the 
more impressive, to stand upon the crest 
of a high canon or to wind through its 
depths and look up at its beetling sides, 
which seem to cleave the clouds. What- 
ever be the point of view, from top or 
bottom, with the usual discontent of hu- 
man beings in all things, the observer will 
always wish he were at the other place, 
from which, as he imagines, something 
better could be seen. 

At the Potrero I found a good, sub- 



SOUTHWESTERN CHIHUAHUA. 347 

stantial log house, built and maintained 
by the Batopilas Company, and used 
by them as a shelter for members of 
their pack trains, instead of depend- 
ing on the sky for a covering. One 
end of the house was divided off, where 
grain was stored for all the animals. 
There was also a storeroom for provi- 
sions of various kinds, thus saving 
much packing over the rough mountain 
trail. 

These houses, I learned, had been 
built about every thirty-five miles along 
the trail, and at each a trusty Indian lived 
to care for them. They were a great 
comfort, and seemed even luxurious after 
a hard all-day ride on the rough trail. 
At each was a large corral or pen, into 
which the mules were turned for their 
feed, and this too was a saving of labor 



348 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

and time to the packers, and allowed one 
to make a much earlier start, as well as to 
omit the long noon camp of the Mexicans. 
In each of the houses was an immense 
fireplace, which, on the arrival of the 
party, was piled with pitch-pine, and a 
most welcome blaze and warmth soon 
thawed out the coldest. 

At the Potrero a church, built by the 
first Jesuits in this country, still remains, 
and is used for devotion by the Indians, 
although roofless and over two hundred 
years old. Standing near the ruined 
door, and looking in, one sees an altar 
surmounted by a cross and a scaffolding 
of flowers. Above this is one of the most 
beautiful pictures ever seen in such a 
peculiar framing. The roofless old 
church reveals the most magnificent 
castellated cliffs to be seen along the 



THE RETURN BY ANOTHER TRAIL. 349 

Batopilas River for many miles. Taking 
the tops of the battlements, which rise 
thousands of feet in sheer altitude in 
many places, so that they will fall just 
below the top of the church door, thus 
leaving a little streak of blue sky between, 
and viewing the scene as framed by the 
rest of the church, the observer has a 
picture before him that would make the 
reputation of any artist who could trans- 
fer it to canvas with reasonable ability. 
Near by was the primitive belfry, two 
sticks set in the ground, and the bell, an 
old bronze one, hung from a cross-piece 
between them. Once each year a priest 
visited this place, upon which occasion a 
great festival was held. Indian runners 
were sent out into the mountains for 
many miles around, to induce the timid 
Tarahumaris to come in. Here all the 



35° CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

civilized and semi-civilized brought their 
children to be christened, and they again 
induced many of the wilder Indians of 
the cliffs and caves to join them. In this 
way the priests reach the wilder ones, and 
sometimes conversions are made among 
them. This is their only method of 
approaching the uncivilized natives, 
through the medium of those not quite so 
wild, who allow them to visit their homes 
in the cliffs and crags and hold a limited 
intercourse. From the steep cliffs above 
the resort, the wild Tarahumaris can look 
down on the strange doings of their more 
civilized brothers in the little valley be- 
low. This they told us was often done, 
but the instances were quite rare in which 
the very wild ones had been coaxed down 
from the erases above. 

I have been asked what chance a mis- 



THE RETURN BY ANOTHER TRAIL. 351 

sionary would have among these people 
and how he could best reach them. 
Where the patient priest or Jesuit fails to 
penetrate with all the assistance he can 
derive from those of his own faith who 
are kinsmen of the people to be ap- 
proached, it would seem indeed a difficult 
task for those of other beliefs. 

I was told that these people, the semi- 
civilized Tarahumaris, are particularly 
fond of colored prints, and any brightly 
colored picture is to them an object of 
veneration. Often old copies of Puck 
or Judge drift down here, passing from 
the hands of miners to Mexicans and 
thence to the Indians. These they pre- 
serve and worship as saints, and to them 
they offer up their simple prayers. 

Early the next morning we were to 
climb to the top of the steep cliffs be- 



352 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

hind the old church at the Potrero ; that 
night we slept for the last time in the 
land of the tropics. Late in the evening 
I walked over by the home of a Tara- 
humari Indian, He had a bright fire 
burning in front of his hut, and on the 
ground his family were all sleeping peace- 
fully, even down to a very young baby. 
The house appeared to be deserted, being 
used probably only during the rainy 
season. 

Next morning by four o'clock we began 
the ascent of the steep mountain. It was 
before daylight when we left the canon, 
and by the time we had climbed for three 
hours I noticed one of the most singular 
cliff or cave dwellings I had so far seen. 
There was a distinct trail leading to it. 
This trail could be perceived from the 
very bottom of a deep canon which 



THE RETURN BY ANOTHER TRAIL. 355 

branched off from the Batopilas, led 
along dizzy cliffs, holding to the sides of 
the steep mountain until it reached a 
height fully equal to our own, and finally 
disappeared in an enormous cave. This 
must have been capable of containing 
hundreds of people, as it was over a mile 
distant, and at that distance we could 
perfectly discern its mouth and even its 
interior walls. It was the dizziest climb 
to a home I have ever read of or 
seen. 

That afternoon I came to the farms of 
some civilized Tarahumaris, built on the 
very steep mountain side, on which the 
dirt was held back by terraces or rude re- 
taining walls, so very similar to those seen 
around the ruins of Northwestern Chi- 
huahua, supposed to be Toltec or Aztec, 
that I could not help thinking that there 



35^ CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

was some closer connection between them 
than that of mere resemblance. 

I had heard a dozen theories to ac- 
count for these terraces in the North, 
as for collecting water in dry seasons, for 
conducting water, as places for defense, 
etc., etc., but, with an actual case directly 
under observation, this seems to be a 
better explanation : In decades and 
centuries of rainy seasons of more or less 
violence, after the people had abandoned 
these northern houses, or had been killed 
by their enemies, ail the retained loose 
earth would have been swept away, leav- 
ing only rude and dilapidated walls or 
terraces sweeping around the mountain 
sides, from which almost anything could 
be inferred, whether the most peaceful 
form or the most warlike fortification. 

Although our journey began at four 



THE RETURN BY ANOTHER TRAIL. 357 

o'clock in the morning it was two or three 
o'clock in the afternoon before we reached 
the welcome shelter of the next station, 
and it seemed to me from beginning to 
end one uninterrupted climb. This sta- 
tion on the Teboreachic was an exception 
to the rest on the trail regarding distance, 
for it is only eighteen miles from the Po- 
trero, although eighteen miles of incessant 
uphill work. While the trail is by no 
means as steep or dangerous as that lead- 
ing into the Urique barranca, it is fully as 
long a climb to reach the top or cumbra, 
and one does not welcome a retreat to 
the somber pines with half the enthusi- 
asm inspired by a descent into the tropical 
foliage of the deep barrancas. I have 
already described so many ascents and 
descents, that carried us from one kind of 
climate to another, that I hardly think it 



358 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. ; 

necessary to repeat it in this instance. ; 

One feature of the ascent, however, ex- | 

ceptionally pleasant, was the ease with . 

which one could get off one's tired mule ^ 

and not only earn its gratitude, if a mule ! 

may be said to possess that virtue, but i 

also stretch one's weary limbs by climb- | 

ing over a comparatively good trail. : 

As soon as we were well up in the : 

mountains we found the region extremely I 

well watered, beautiful streams flowing j 

through every little glen or valley, many | 

of them filled with small trout. This Ba- j 

topilas trail differed from the other in that : 

some attempt at grade had been made. ; 

It did not adopt the erratic Indian method j 

of making for the top of every tall peak j 

and then climbing down on the other 1 

side, only to repeat the performance until ; 

the rider became almost seasick from thq ; 



THE RETURN BY ANOTHER TRAIL. 359 

undulations. Since Batopilas came into 
the hands of Americans there has been 
a constant effort on their part to look 
for better grades and secure a simpler 
method of ingress and egress from their 
mountain mines, and they are continually 
broadening and improving the path. 
Still, at the best, they can never make 
anything but a narrow mountain trail in 
that country of crag and canon. The 
day will come when railways are built 
through that rich region, but until then 
the patient mule will be the only means 
of transportation. 

The first night on the Teboreachic 
was a most delightfully cool one after 
the long spell of warm weather we had 
experienced on the lower levels. It was 
preceded by a slight thunder shower, the 
first one of the season, but it warned us in 



360 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

unmistakable terms that the rainy season 
was not far off, and that we had better 
get out of the mountains before it was 
upon us. Before making La Laja, the 
second night, we passed the homes of 
many Indians, both of the semi-civilized 
type and the wilder ones of the cliffs and 
caves. At one point I stopped to get a 
photograph of the homes of some cliff 
dwellers, where, directly below the cliffs, 
were a couple of rude stone huts, built on 
a steep side of the mountain. The men 
seemed to be absent from this place, but 
we could see the forms of some women 
moving about and crouching down to 
avoid being seen by us. My Mexican 
man, Dionisio, was greatly alarmed at 
my action in dropping behind the party 
to photograph this group of strange 
homes, and loudly declared we would all 



THE RETURN BY ANOTHER TRAIL. 3^3 

be shot by the men, should they return 
and see us at this, to them, strange work. 
It was almost impossible to induce 
Dionisio to bring up my camera or 
hold my mule, so anxious was he to get 
away. There was really no danger what- 
ever from these people, as they only fight 
to defend their homes, but the fear of the 
cowardly Mexican was ver)^ amusing. 

Before leaving Batopilas we had been 
told that whatever we had seen of the 
wonderful or beautiful in nature on our 
outward journey by other trails, a treat of 
a most magnificent character was reserved 
for us on this route, one that was unique 
and wholly without parallel in those grand 
old mountains. This was the day's 
journey through the Arroyo de las Igle- 
sias. So we were in a measure prepared 
for the many beautiful sights that awaited 



364 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

US on our third day. Although we had 
been passing through picturesque valleys 
and were constantly crossing lovely 
mountain brooks, one must admit without 
hesitation that of the many hundreds of 
beautiful streams in the Sierra Madre 
Mountains, flanked by cut and carved 
stone, there is none that will compare in 
extent or beauty with the sculptured rock 
of the Arroyo de las Iglesias (the Canon 
of the Churches), so named on account of 
the spires of rock that greet one on every 
side for the greater part of a day's travel. 
For eighteen or twenty miles the Caiion 
of the Churches seems more like some 
theatrical representation of a fairy scene 
than a real one from nature. The lime- 
stone has been eroded into a thousand 
fantastic forms by the action "of the 
elements, the predominating one being 



THE CAI^ON OF CHURCHES. 365 

some feature of a church or cathedral, 
either in spires, minarets, or flying but- 
tresses built far out from the main walls 
of the canon. The most grotesque forms 
are those that generally cap the spires ; 
it seems necessary that some hard rock 
above should protect the softer under- 
neath in order to insure one of these 
petrified pinnacles of nature. 

One of them, two hundred feet in 
height, as seen from the canon, was as 
good a spread eagle as a person would 
want to see cut out of stone, while on 
a tower not a hundred yards away was a 
bust of Hadrian, quite as good as that 
in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ten 
times as large, and a thousandfold more 
conspicuously placed. A person with a 
small amount of imagination could easily 
make a land of enchantment out of this 



366 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

arroyo with its singular columns and pil- 
lars, its leaning towers and busts and 
statues, that meet him on every side and 
are repeated every few hundred yards by 
great canons that break off to the right 
and left, and which are perfect duplicates 
of the original through which the trav- 
eler wends his way. 

Strange, singular, and curious as are 
these works of nature, they are not so 
astonishing to the average civilized per- 
son as the works of man. Among these 
beetling crags and dizzy cliffs savage 
men have found places to erect their 
houses and live their lives. Ladders of 
notched sticks lead from one crag to the 
crest of another, whenever the rude steps 
made by nature do not allow these crea- 
tures of the cliffs to climb their almost 
perpendicular faces ; a false step on the 




HOMES OF CLIFF DWELLERS IN ARROYO DE LAS IGLESIAS, 



THE CAATOJV of CHURCHES. 369 

slight ladders or a turning of one of 
them, which to me seemed so likely, 
would send the climber two hundred to 
three hundred feet to the bottom of the 
canon, perhaps a mangled corpse. 

Had I wanted to visit them directly in 
their homes I doubt ver}'- much if I could 
have reached them, for I am sorry to 
say I am not a sailor, a tight-rope per- 
former, or an aeronaut. Beyond this 
place the people had fled to their houses, 
and could, by disarranging a single 
notched stick, have made our ascent im- 
possible. This, I think, was one of the 
methods of defense adopted by ancient 
cliff dwellers of Arizona, as shown at 
least by some which I have seen and 
which now, with the logs rotted away, 
are unapproachable. It is even possible, 
as I have more than hinted before, that 



37 o CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

there is some closer affinity between the 
Arizona and Mexican cHff dwellers than 
this simple but suggestive one I have 
mentioned. It is certainly a question I 
would like to see some good archaeologist 
struggle with for a year or two. 

So steep are the walls of the Arroyo 
de las Iglesias in many places where we 
observed cliff dwellers that, had they 
thrown an object from the little porthole- 
like window of their stone pens with 
ordinary strength, it would certainly have 
brought up in the canon bottom probably 
two hundred or three hundred feet below. 
How they can rear little children on 
these cliffs without a loss of one hundred 
per cent, annually is to me one of the 
most mysterious things connected with 
these strange people. 

They are worshipers of the sun, so 




IN ARROYO DE LAS IGLESIAS, CUFF DWELLINGS IN ROCKS. 



THE CAN-ON OF CHURCHES. 373 

good authorities say, and on the first day 
of a child's life they dedicate it to that 
great orb by placing it in his direct rays. 
In many other ways they show their de- 
votion to that source which has been 
loved by so many primitive people. 
Their whole range of worship would 
certainly be interesting in the extreme. 
They have the greatest dread of the owl, 
which, as is known elsewhere as well as 
here, has some association or other of 
evil connected with it, from the slightest 
disaster to death. How many other 
things they fear no one knows, but they 
certainly are not afraid to climb clifTs and 
crags that would frighten the average 
white man half to death to even con- 
template. 

That all their children are not killed off 
every month by falling from the eleva- 



374 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

tions is shown by the fact that we saw a i 
few of them playing in a little '' clearing " ; 
in the brush at the bottom of the canon. \ 
But we did not see them very long, for \ 
as soon as they got sight of the leading 
member of our party they fled to the 
brush and caves, and a pointer dog could i 
not have flushed one five minutes later. | 
I have already described some of their , 
strange methods of hunting game. In 
fishing they build dams in the mountain : 
streams and poison the fish that collect | 
therein with a deadly plant the Mexicans - 
call palmilla, securing everything, finger- \ 
lings and all. They never tattoo, paint, 
or wear masks as far as I could ascertain. 
They are a strange, wild set of savages 
in a strange, picturesque country, a coun- 
try that will repay visiting in the future i 
should the means of transportation — rail- j 




A CLIFF DWELLING. 



THE CANON OF CHURCHES. 377 

ways or better stage facilities — ever be 
sufficiently improved. 

After leaving the wonderful Valley of 
the Churches it requires a night's rest 
before one is ready to give much admi- 
ration or attention to the magnificent 
scenery on every hand. It seems as if 
you had had a surfeit of the beautiful. I 
obtained a number of interesting sketches 
and photographs of these homes in the 
clouds. The photographs were taken 
under great drawbacks, as the days were 
stormy and cloudy, and even the lowest 
of the cliff dwellings were difficult of 
approach. 

Just as we were descending a high 
mountain into the beautiful valley of the 
Tatawichic, we passed by an enormous 
rock on the steep trail of the mountain 
side that must have been fully three hun- 



378 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

dred feet high and not over thirty feet in 
diameter, which did not vary a foot from 
its base to its top, where it was rounded 
off Hke a half globe. It was green in 
color, looked exactly like a pitahaya 
cactus turned into stone, and seemed won- 
derfully unstable as seen from the trail 
that wound around its base on the steep 
descent. The name of the station at this 
point was Pilarcitas (Little Pillars), from 
the many curious and fantastic rock for- 
mations which assumed the shape of pil- 
lars, either singly or in groups of two, 
three, or more. The previous night had 
been very cold in the mountains, and the 
constant showers only increased the chill ; 
so we found the little station houses the 
most welcome places of refuge as night 

came on. 

The last station on this trail is about 




^^^p^^^^ii^' 



STONE PILLAR ABOUT THREE HUNDRED FEET HIGH, 
RESEMBLING CACTUS. 



AMONG THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 381 

four or five miles from Carichic, and is in 
the center of a productive and well-watered 
valley. The little cultivation done there 
by the Indians shows a wonderful fertility 
of soil ; in truth there are but few of the 
staple products that could not be grown 
in that portion of the country in the great- 
est abundance. At this last station of the 
Batopilas Company they start their pri- 
vate stages directly for Chihuahua. We 
remained over for a day, awaiting the, 
departure of the regular diligence from 
Carichic. 

While here I talked with an intelligent 
American, who had lived for many years 
in this country, about the Tarahumaris. 
He told me he had that season attended 
one of their foot races, a favorite pastime 
of these people. At this particular con- 
test one of the fleetest and most endur- 



382 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

ing foot runners in all the great band of 
the Tarahu maris (or tribe of '* foot 
runners," as we know they are called) 
was a contestant. That summer he had 
made one hundred Spanish miles — about 
ninety of ours — in eleven hours and 
twenty minutes, in a great foot contest 
near the Bacochic River, resting but once 
for half an hour in this terribly long race. 
The man, Mr. Thomas Ewing by name, 
told me that he attempted to run this 
foot runner a viielta, (which is six miles 
straight away and return, or twelve miles 
altogether), Ewing using a horse ; and 
although the white man tried this three 
times with three different horses, the 
Tarahu mari cave dweller beat him each 
time. These contests of the Tarahumaris 
are almost always very long and excit- 
ing. They make their bets with stock 



AMONG THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 383 

of some kind, sheep, cattle, or goats, and 
large numbers of these change hands on 
the outcome of the races. In a letter to 
me regarding these races, Mr. Ewing 
writes of one of the runners : 

*' I was with him " — the Indian — " when 
he was running his fifth round. It was 
about eight o'clock in the morning, and he 
was running at about eight miles an hour. 
At that time his competitor was about 
six miles behind him. I rode beside him 
for about four miles, when my horse had 
enough of it. There were a hundred 
Indians or more to see the race, and they 
had stations about every two miles on the 
trail, where they stopped the runners, 
rubbed them down, and gave t\).Qm piiio la, 
a parched corn, ground fine and mixed 
with water. The runners stopped one 
minute, or about that, at each station for 



384 CAFE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 

rest. The Indian who won this race, al- 
though tired, finished in good shape, and 
took in about fifty dollars in stock." 
These contests in running- are said to 
be one of the amusements of even the 
wildest of the Tarahumaris, although 
I doubt whether many white men have 
witnessed them. Even as early as the 
days when Grijalva, the discoverer of 
Mexico, and Cortes, its conquerer, 
landed on its shores where now is the 
important port of Vera Cruz, within 
twenty-four hours after their appear- 
ance an Aztec artist had made perfect 
representations of the fleet, the kind 
and amount of armament, and correct 
pictures of the artillery and horses 
(although he had never seen such things 
before), and had transmitted them nearly 
two hundred miles by carrier to the City 



AMONG THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 385 

of Mexico, placing them in the hands of 
the Aztec Emperor Montezuma. Cortes 
afterward found that the Aztec, Tlascalan, 
and other armies of that portion of the 
country always moved at a run when on 
the march, thus trebling and quadrupling 
the military marches of the present day. 
This was the first intimation to Europe- 
ans of the endurance and swift-footedness 
of the natives of the great Mexican 
plateau, and a similar characteristic was 
found to be almost universal among the 
Indians of the plateau. But it was after- 
ward discovered that the people most 
prominent in this respect was one in the 
far north of New Spain, hidden away in 
the fastnesses of the Sierra Madres, 
whose very name, as given by other 
tribes, Tarahumari, meaning foot run- 
ners, indicated their special excellence. 

THE END. 



3I|.77 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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